[M II A II R II K]

Light Rail Boom Needs A Second Look


Jul 09 2009

Alan Hoffman

Read More: http://citiwire.net/post/1090/

Touted coast to coast as the key to “transit-oriented development,” light rail systems are close to “accepted wisdom” as keys to 21st century metropolitan growth. But it’s worth remembering that the Interstate Highway System, when first promulgated in the 1950s, was widely and uncritically hailed too. Sadly, we failed to take into count the price we’d ultimately pay as the massive roadways subsidized scattered development and simultaneously helped empty out many downtowns. In short, there were winners and losers. Cities since have pumped many billions into reviving downtowns, but even to this day the phrase “inner city” still conjures unfavorable images of the bereft neighborhoods left behind to decay when the middle classes escaped to the fringes.

The spread phenomenon persists. The Cleveland metro region, for example, has about as many people as it did in the 1990s, but it’s expanded its urbanized footprint some 30 percent–mostly to overwhelmingly auto-dependent fringe areas. It’s becoming clear the freeway-based system may not be sustainable. Metro-area auto congestion continues to worsen, urban sprawl continues unabated (while threatening some of our most productive farmland), concerns about greenhouse gas emissions are growing, and there’s the specter of steeply rising prices for “post-peak” oil.

But leaping to light rail could well trigger a new set of unintended consequences. In some locations, it may work well–it is a proven and popular transportation tool. But I’d argue it’s as mismatched to today’s American urban form as was the freeway-centric vision of the 1950s to the urban form of its day. And that we ignore this mismatch at our peril. For good or for bad, the modern American city can be characterized mostly as a widely-scattered set of dispersed origins–essentially, where people live–and multiple destinations–those clusters of employment and retail where people travel to in a given day.