Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Mass Transit and the 1/4-Mile Dictum

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James A. Bacon
in

Arthur C. Nelson, co-director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, has re-written one of the most commonly used “rules of thumb” used by the planning profession: the idea that pedestrians are willing to walk no more than 10 minutes, or a quarter mile, to reach a transit destination.

For years planners have argued that transit-oriented development — taller buildings, pedestrian-friendly streetscapes — should be permitted with a quarter-mile radius of transit stations. In a recent presentation to the Montgomery County, Md., planning board, however, Nelson argued that the quarter-mile radius might be too restrictive. As reported by Examiner.com, Nelson said:

“We have identified three categories: the saunter, which is walking a quarter of a mile, the business walk, getting one kilometer in 10 minutes, and the New York walk, three-quarters of a mile.” The business walk, he said, is most common.

Adopting the new metric would argue for increasing the area of transit-oriented development (TOD) around rail stations. Said Nelson: “We should design our TODs around that, which will increase the total area three times.”
(Photo credit: Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech.)

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8 responses to “Mass Transit and the 1/4-Mile Dictum”

  1. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Jim:

    This is not new stuff, just repackaged for sale by Va Tech.

    Note that the First Exercise in our next column has both .25 and .50 radi.

    The area outside of the .25 is important but the most important to support shared-vehicle system use is inside .25.

    Also if you go out to .50 or larger you have 500 acres plus for each station area, that adds up to far more land than can ever be used at transit related densities.

    EMR

  2. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Walking a half mile toting a briefcase/laptop, umbrella and lunch, while wearing a business suit in 80 degree heat is no fun.

  3. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    I’m intriqued by the distance paradigm.

    For one thing – I don’t think it is how far as how easier or hard it is to cross streets.

    You can be within 1/8 or a mile or even 200 feet but if there is a six lane highway there.. it’s a major obstacle to foot traffic.

    take another situation. How far is someone willing to walk from a parking garage?

    Then one more from a different angle.

    How far is someone willing to commute from afar?

    I suspect in the latter case – it is as much or more a function of time as it is distance.

    For instance if someone could commute from Richmond to Washington in one hour, how would that compare to say .. commuting from Fredericksburg to Washington in one hour?

  4. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Larry:

    You are right about street crossings, but…

    The key to pedestrian travel is interest and ability. Most will cross a street to be in contact with their love interest. Few will walk from Springer Mt. to Mt Katahdin.

    How far a person is willing to walk depends on interest, time, resources, health / mobility.

    The key for most walkers is to make the station-area travel diverse, complex, stimulating, but above all interesting / satisfying and safe.

    For some that requires higher levels a security / safety, for others higher levels of diversity and interest.

    That is why a functional station area must have a network of pathways that provide a variety of alternative experiences and a minimum of obstacles like wide streets.

    “Willing” is also critical. In our years living and working on small Caribbean islands we seldom found workers who would rather walk to town, regardless of the spectacular scenery. When they did, there was always someone or something they hoped to encounter along the way.

    I will address the time / distance issue in another post.

    EMR

  5. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Upon Further Review

    Functional station-area strategy is a matter of scale, intensity / flux and Balance.

    Scale

    With respect to scale if one uses a .50 mile radii then the Village Scale station-area is a mile from edge to edge. It is not the station platform alone that should be accessible but the entire station-area.

    Intensity

    If there are 500 acres in the station-area (.50 mile radii) then one spreads out the uses losing connectivity, adjacency and synergy. In terms of form, think “mesa” rather than a “pyramid.” 500 acres of higher intensity (2.5 vehicle trip ends per square foot of ground) requires three system stations with METRO capacity (or two stations serving different systems). See Paris Metro and RER.

    Balance

    The big issue is Balance. The station area needs to be large enough to have Alpha Village scale diversity and small enough to have functional access the destinations needed to assemble a quality life.

    EMR

  6. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Larry:

    The distance, resources issue is addressed in our response to nova_middle_man down in the WaPo SPEAKING post.

    Have a great holiday, whatever you celebrate at this time of the year.

    EMR

  7. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    EMR – you too have a good holiday.

    We’re off on Monday on a four-day canoe trip on the Waccamaw River (Blackwater) in SE North Carolina where very definitely there is a time/distance continuum – very unlike our normal lives.

  8. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “How far a person is willing to walk depends on interest, time, resources, health / mobility.”

    I know most readers of this blog probably have found themselves while travelling… a staying in a motel .. and asking where a good place to eat was nearby within walking distance and found that seeing the eatery and getting to it… can sometimes be pretty challenging since many of these venues are around busy interstate ramp/exits.

    I was … thinking that people’s attitudes about walking may be similiar whether they are walking to/from a parking garage, or to a “nearby” restaurant or to a METRO station.

    And I guess the point I’d make is that if you put a METRO station on one side of an interstate without a way to walk across – you can pretty much forget about TOD on that other side unless you want to pay for the crossing infrastructure.

    In my county – over and over – there is this dialogue about whether or not traffic signals should have walkways and on-demand buttons and invariably the planners want the amenities and VDOT and/or road engineers usually do not – because it essentially degrades the efficiency of the road.

    The idea in reverse – that roads decrease the efficiency of non-auto travel … seems to not infrequently end up … as second tier.

    So .. if I were king.. I’d charge autos not only a congestion pricing fee but a “displacement” fee to help pay for walking infrastructure.

    And you know what – I think a lot of folks would support it because each and every one of us has at some point been presented with strong disincentives to walk.

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