About 25 percent of all Americans shopping for a home in the next 20 years will want to live within a half-mile of a public transit stop, and people who give up cars completely can trim more than $6,000 from their annual household budgets.
That’s the word from Peter Skosey, vice president of external relations for the Metropolitan Planning Council. Skosey wrote about public transportation’s benefits to home owners in the March issue of New Homes Magazine (available now at these locations).
After college, Chicago resident Ariel Diamond chose to settle just two blocks from the Sheridan Red Line station on the North Side. She quickly discovered that the city’s streets are laid out on a grid, making it a no-brainer to get just about anywhere on a bus. And she was thrilled to discover what she calls “the magical grocery store” located adjacent to “her” train station. Alta Vista Foods carries an abundance of fresh foods, including meats and produce, all packed neatly into a tiny storefront just steps from the Sheridan stop.
Diamond’s experience illustrates why more developers and homebuyers are embracing “transit-oriented development.” TOD is pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use development built around – and shaped by – transit stations. Typically focused on capturing residential and retail opportunities within a half-mile of a transit station, TOD combines rental and for-sale homes with restaurants, grocery stores, office buildings and other commercial uses.
Read the rest of Skosey’s column here.
As I mentioned in a previous thread, several lovely neighborhoods such as Peterson Park, West Rogers Park and Budlong Woods/Bowmanville are sorely lacking in good public transportation, and thus are uninviting to people wihout cars. Does anyone know about the history of this situation? Why did the CTA or its forerunners refuse to put train lines into so many parts of the Northwest Side, thus making it necessary for non-drivers to take two or three buses to get downtown?
Refuse to put trains? There were streetcar lines over the entire city (just like LA); one went out Devon to McCormack, there was one up Western to Howard (and remember, the precurser to the swift stopped at Ridge, Asbury [Western], Dodge [California] and so on). The streetcars went out of fashion because of various things, among them, the cta not being able to afford to run lightly used lines and bus transit being seen as more modern, efficient and flexible (as well as heavily pushed by various industrial interests).
I also think that in the late 50s/early 60s there was a feeling that everyone would drive (or soon be driving) and that everybody would be happier in these neighborhoods if “undesirable” elements could be kept out more easily w/o mass transit – this was a horrible time for race relations. And you have to keep in mind that native Chicagoan’s view taking the bus by choice as weird, since that’s what poor people who can’t afford cars do. And you can’t get to Orland Square, Chicago Ridge or the like by transit easily. My long-winded take, sorry.
Yes, I’ve heard the story about how the various pro-bus interests killed (or at least rendered dormant) LA’s once-excellent public transporation system. I didn’t know that it applied to Chicago as well.
Yes, pretty much all over and around the whole country. Chicago was (or had I should say) either the largest, but I think in typical second city fashion, the second largest street railway network in the world.
You can tell where they were in some places; Devon has older and denser development than Peterson which didn’t have a surface route. There was a line up Lincoln, Clark and even Broadway.