July/August 2010 Parking - 38

Figure 1. New transit-oriented community (Ijburg), Amsterdam.

sustainable policy is likely to be developed and applied. The city of Vancouver, British Columbia, is widely regarded as a leader in sustainable urban planning. A number of years ago, the City defined priorities for mobility enhancement, in the following order: 1. pedestrians 2. cyclists 3. public transit 4. commercial vehicles 5. private cars These priorities have since driven the city’s transportation investments, with the result that Vancouver is now one of the most walkable cities in North America. New communities such as Yaletown, False Creek and Coal Harbour have been developed with a mix of land uses, wide sidewalks and a high level of urban design. The regional municipality of York in Ontario subsequently adopted a similar prioritization in its transportation master plan (TMP), though given the scale of the region and the mandate of the regional government to facilitate regional mobility across longer distances, it placed pedestrians and public transit at the top of the priority list. The York TMP contains an extensive list of policies and programs designed to make it a leader in sustainability (see www.york.ca). The York region TMP also involved extensive work with respect to development of sustainability-based criteria and measures for evaluation of transportation alternatives on a regionwide or citywide basis. The criteria were based on a set of 11 sustainability principles, addressing planning, funding and implementation. The principles are shown in Table 1 on pages 40–41.

At the corridor or area level, agencies such as the city of San Francisco, San Jose and Montgomery County, Md., are moving away from a traditional intersection level of service-based analysis toward methods that are more focused on sustainable modes and the resultant increases in capacity. Level of service-based analysis, when used in planning improvements to a corridor, tends to support continued road widenings, without regard for the capacity offered by alternative modes. Recent rapid transit planning studies in the Toronto area have focused more on the increase in person-carrying capacity to be provided by these initiatives, while still working to maintain sufficient vehicular access for essential trips. In Europe, cities such as Amsterdam are developing new areas based on transit capacity, essentially reviving the idea of the “transit village,” which was common at the turn of the 19th century in North America (see Figure 1). One of the key tools in sustainability-based assessments is a detailed travel demand forecasting model. At the regional or municipal level, application of backcasting models (as opposed to forecasting models) is a recent trend that holds promise for modeling the massive changes that may be needed to create a truly sustainable transportation/land use system. Forecasting models respond to observed trends and lead to solutions that are adaptations of existing systems, with supporting performance measures that tend to justify an incremental approach to change. Backcasting models begin with definition of a desired outcome and then work through selection of strategic initiatives that can realize that outcome based on costs, benefits and risks. This is a way to proactively break the cycle of “predict, react and defend” changes to the transportation/ land use system. At the corridor level, detailed forecasting models are an appropriate tool for assessment of sustainable transportation initiatives once the preferred vision has been defined—for example, implementation of rapid transit, as in the Hurontario example cited above. In the Hurontario study, an EMME model was developed with a fine-grained zone system within a 500 meter walking distance of the corridor, with detailed pedestrian connections. Land use plans addressing height and density by block that are both realistic in terms of

National Parking Association PARKING July/August 2010

July/August 2010 Parking

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of July/August 2010 Parking