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Smart Growth and Transportation

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Background


Transportation and land use patterns are inextricably linked. Transportation facilities and networks have the power to shape development, influence property values, and determine a neighborhood's character and quality of life. In addition, transportation investments have important consequences for the environment, including air and water quality, climate change, and open space preservation. How communities develop also affects how convenient and appealing public transportation, bicycling, and walking are for their residents.

Integrated transportation and land use planning gives people more choices for getting around their town and their region. When homes, offices, stores, and civic buildings are near transit stations and close to each other, it is convenient to walk, bicycle, or take transit. This expanded transportation choice makes it easier to incorporate physical activity into daily routines, reduces transportation costs, and gives more freedom and mobility to low-income individuals, senior citizens, disabled persons, and others who cannot or choose not to drive or own a car.

Providing a range of transportation choices and the walkable neighborhoods that support them can help improve air quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. According to EPA's Emissions Inventory,1 roughly 17 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions comes from passenger vehicles. Developing compactly and investing in public transit and other transportation options make it easier for people to drive less, lowering greenhouse gas emissions. These approaches can also help reduce carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, and other pollutants emitted by motor vehicles. To learn more about how smart growth affects climate change, see the Smart Growth and Climate Change page.

Four transportation and land use strategies enhance quality of life and protect human health and the environment:

  • Smart and sustainable street design.
  • Transit-oriented development.
  • Parking management.
  • Sustainable transportation planning.

1Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2009, April 2011.

Note: This web page deals exclusively with the intersection of transportation and smart growth. More comprehensive transportation information is available from EPA's Office of Transportation and Air Quality.

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Smart and Sustainable Street Design

Historically, transportation planners have overlooked the important role streets play in shaping neighborhoods. For decades, decisions about street size and design in many communities have focused on getting as many cars as possible through the streets as quickly as possible.

Street design determines whether an area will be safe and inviting for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit users, which affects the viability of certain types of retail, influences land values and tax receipts, and shapes overall economic strength and resilience. (To learn more about how street design affects how quickly emergency response vehicles will be able to reach a fire, police, or medical emergency, see the Smart Growth Streets and Emergency Response page.)

Street design also has important environmental impacts. It can determine the viability of less-polluting modes of transportation, affecting air quality and climate change. Street design also influences the volume of stormwater runoff, the water quality of that runoff, and the magnitude of the heat island effect.

Through approaches such as complete streets  Exit and context sensitive solutions Exit, communities can create attractive streets that also improve mobility and safety.

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Transit-Oriented Development

The United States is in the midst of a demographic shift that will have major effects on the nation's housing market and development patterns.

  • A 2007 report from Reconnecting America, Why Transit-Oriented Development And Why Now, Exit shows that the fastest-growing demographic groups — older, single-person households, and non-white households — prefer homes within walking distance of transportation alternatives, shopping, restaurants, parks, and cultural amenities. 
  • Market surveys and research have consistently shown that at least one-third of homebuyers prefer homes in smart growth neighborhoods, and this share is growing. (To learn more about market preferences, see the Smart Growth: The Business Opportunity for Developers and Production Builders page.)

Transit-oriented development (TOD) creates walkable communities for people of all ages and incomes and provides more transportation and housing choices.

  • TOD is compact development built around a transit station or within easy walking distance (typically a half-mile) of a station and containing a mix of land uses such as housing, offices, shops, restaurants, and entertainment.
  • TOD can help lower household transportation costs, boost public transit ridership, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, spur economic development, and make housing more affordable by reducing developer expenditures on parking and allowing higher-density zoning.

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Parking Management

Parking requirements can be an obstacle to compact development. The parking requirements found in many conventional zoning codes often call for off-street parking based on generic standards, not on individual sites' needs and context, and require too much parking to be provided on the development site.

  • With their high costs and space requirements, conventional parking regulations can deter compact, mixed-use development and redevelopment in older neighborhoods.
  • Large expanses of surface parking and stand-alone parking structures can discourage walking and make driving the only viable transportation between destinations.
  • Better-managed parking can support lively, economically strong, mixed-use districts; encourage walking and transit use; and reduce the costs of redevelopment and infill projects.

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Sustainable Transportation Planning

Transportation planning will get the best results for communities when it is part of a comprehensive approach that includes land use and environmental planning at the local and regional levels. Transportation planning and design choices have a direct influence on development patterns, travel mode choices, infrastructure costs, redevelopment potential, the health of natural resources, and other community concerns.

This integrated approach requires transportation and land use planners to:

  • Examine the effects of transportation projects on future growth, development, and long-range economic goals.
  • Assess each project's effects on air and water quality and other environmental resources.
  • Determine whether transportation and other infrastructure can be built on a timetable consistent with development or redevelopment projects.

Tools that can help planners effectively link transportation investments with preferred development patterns include:

  • Regional transportation models.
  • Land use scenario models.
  • Local-scale transportation planning tools.
  • Performance measurement.

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Publications

Visit our Publications page for a list of publications about smart growth and transportation.

EPA Resources


General Resources
 

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Smart and Sustainable Street Design

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Infrastructure Financing Options for Transit-Oriented Development

Transit-Oriented Development

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 Parking Management

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Sustainable Transportation Planning

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Webinars

Visit our webinars page for information about webinars hosted by the Smart Growth Program on transportation.

Other Resources

The following links exit the site Exit

General Resources

  • Policies that Work: A Governors' Guide to Growth and Development (2009), developed by the Governors' Institute on Community Design through an EPA grant, provides state policymakers with samples of policies, administrative actions, and spending decisions that have helped other states grow smarter. The transportation section recommends approaches to creating a more balanced transportation system that allows for better mobility and more choices.
  • The SmartCode, developed by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, is a model form-based development code, centered around the concept of the rural-to-urban transect and available for all scales of planning, from the region to the community to the block and building.

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Smart and Sustainable Street Design

  • Context-Sensitive Solutions, from the Institute of Transportation Engineers, links to the institute's resources on context-sensitive design.
    • Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares: A Context Sensitive Approach, a 2010 update of the Institute of Transportation Engineers' 2006 Context Sensitive Solutions in Designing Major Urban Thoroughfares for Walkable Communities, provides guidance on applying context-sensitive solutions in communities that support compact development, mixed land uses, walking, and bicycling. It was developed by ITE and the Congress for the New Urbanism with support from EPA.
  • The Federal Highway Administration's Context Sensitive Solutions website offers many resources to help design streets that fit the context of the neighborhood.
  • Emergency Response and Traditional Neighborhood Street Design, from the Local Government Commission, highlights case studies that show how three cities have handled smart growth street designs and emergency response concerns.
  • Emergency Response and Narrow Streets, from the Local Government Commission, describes strategies for traffic calming and emergency response street design.
  • The National Complete Streets Coalition offers resources to help communities transform the way they plan, design, and construct roads so they are safe and convenient for all users.
  • The Transportation Research Board's Access Management Manual provides technical information on access management — the systematic control of the location, spacing, design, and operation of driveways, median openings, interchanges, and street connections to a roadway — and how to develop and administer effective access management programs.
  • Ten Principles of Access Management (PDF) (8 pp, 5 K, About PDF) (2008) is a presentation created by TRB to introduce the concept of access management and provide graphic illustrations of its ten principles.
  • Neighborhood Street Design Guidelines: An Oregon Guide for Reducing Street Widths (PDF) (30 pp, 3.56 M, About PDF) (2000, Neighborhood Streets Project Stakeholders) recommends a process for the development of street standards, provides information to assist communities as they select appropriate standards, and includes model designs.
  • Model Regulations and Plan Amendments for Multimodal Transportation Districts (PDF) (48 pp, 1 M, About PDF) (2004) by Kristine Williams and Karen Seggerman for the Florida Department of Transportation, provides model comprehensive plan amendments and land development regulations to assist local governments in implementing multimodal transportation districts that support walking, bicycling, and transit use.

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Transit-Oriented Development

  • Mixed-Income Transit-Oriented Development Action Guide, developed by the Center for Transit Oriented Development, Federal Transit Administration, and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, is an online tool is designed to help local governments identify the most appropriate and effective planning tools for achieving mixed–income, transit-oriented development.
  • Center for Transit-Oriented Development is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to providing best practices, research, and tools to support market-based, transit-oriented development.
  • Effects of TOD on Housing, Parking, and Travel (PDF) (67 pp, 45 K, About PDF) (2008, Report 128), from the Transit Cooperative Research Project provides original data on TOD residential trip generation and parking, as well as the mode choices of TOD residents and employees. It also identifies best practices to promote, maintain, and improve TOD-related transit ridership.

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Parking Management

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Sustainable Transportation Planning

  • The Smart Transportation Guidebook from the New Jersey Department of Transportation and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation integrates the planning and design of transportation systems in a manner that fosters development of sustainable communities.
  • The Sacramento Region Blueprint Transportation and Land Use Plan is a vision for growth that promotes compact, mixed-use development and more transit choices as an alternative to dispersed development. This site describes the plan and details how it was created, including how the I-PLACE3S scenario planning software was used to model land use and travel impacts.
  • Envision Utah was a broad-based public effort bringing together residents, elected officials, developers, conservationists, and business leaders to make informed decisions about how the state should grow.
  • PlaNYC, the sustainability and resiliency blueprint for New York City, is organized into six key areas (Land, Water, Transportation, Energy, Air, and Climate Change). It sets ten goals, ideally achievable by 2030, that allow for the growth and sustainability of New York City's industry, population, environment, and infrastructure.
  • Transportation 2040 from the Puget Sound Regional Council is an action plan for transportation in the central Puget Sound region for the next 30 years. It identifies investments to support expected growth and improve transportation service, lays out a financing plan that increases reliance on users paying for transportation improvements, and proposes a strategy for reducing transportation's contribution to climate change and its impact on important regional concerns such as air pollution and the health of Puget Sound.
  • Blueprint Denver was adopted in 2002 as a supplement to the Denver Comprehensive Plan 2000. It identifies areas of change and areas of stability and plans for multimodal streets and mixed-use development.
  • LUTRAQ: Making the Land Use, Transportation and Air Quality Connection used principles of transit-oriented development to accommodate Washington County, Oregon's projected population growth of 160,000 in mixed-use neighborhoods served by planned light rail and bus network extensions.

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