Transit Oriented Development: a little less conversation a little more action, please?

Planners and politicians alike are enamoured with the concept of TODS – transit oriented development. Planners see it mostly as an opportunity to create housing density around train stations, on the assumption that most people who might live there will also want to travel where the trains will take them (the city centre). Politicians like to announce things, often without thinking them through. They like ‘silver bullet’ fixes to problems. Complexity and nuance is of little interest. TODs have therefore been both widely and frequently praised, stretching back some three decades. But despite all the hype, we’ve actually not built that many of them. Why?

The first challenge could simply be that the notion of living next to, above or as part of a train station relies a lot on where that train takes people. In all our major capitals, the legacy train network is typically a hub and spoke model, with the CBD as the hub. This is changing to a degree, and Melbourne’s suburban rail loop is perhaps the most ambitious if not Quixotic challenge to that design. The Sydney-Paramatta light rail is another more useful innovation.  But in the main, the assumption is that ‘most people want to commute to inner city jobs’ and that therefore living next to a station that takes you there is a good thing. Which it is, for the roughly 10% of people in a metro area who work in the city centre. What that means in effect though is that a train station based TOD can only appeal to a relatively finite market. The great majority of people have employment destinations which are not CBDs and which are not near a train station.

This hasn’t stopped politicians recently announcing significant policy changes to further support more transit-oriented (rail) development. In Victoria, Premier Jacinta Allen surprised many with her announcement of 25 “activity centres” around train and tram stops, with a further 25 to come. These 50 areas will allow high rise residential buildings close to the station infrastructure, scaling down to less intensive heights further away. The move has been welcomed by development industry groups but not by local residents who live in the affected areas and who were not consulted. Instead, they have been attacked as NIMBYs.

In NSW, Premier Chris Minns took a big swig of the kool-aid earlier this year and announced 37 rail station based precincts across the wider Sydney metro area that would be rezoned to permit high density housing next to the station. The hope is that the initiative will lead to 170,000 more “well-located, well-designed and well-built homes” across the region. The announcement came without community consultation and so far – other than promises – there’s no budget for improved infrastructure in these precincts: things like schools, medical and other things we humans tend to need.

“So, don’t we just need to get on with building more housing?” you might ask.

True, but consider that it will be left to the market (also known as ‘the real world’) to develop this product. Building high density housing is now the most expensive form of housing per square metre. Which means it will be expensive for people to buy. That limits the purchaser pool, whether as investors or owner occupiers. Investors paying more for a product will want a higher rate of rental return, so the idea that building more of the most expensive housing product is in any way going to improve affordability is actually quite bizarre.

It can also be difficult building near or on and especially over train lines. Rail authorities tend to have their own views about how much development should take place next to their rail lines. They don’t want residents moving into these new developments then complaining about noise, dust or vibrations. They can prove obstructive if their approval is required for development to proceed.

It's also worth asking why our policy makers seem to think that development oriented around transport infrastructure must just be housing. There are genuine opportunities to locate assets like schools, offices, medical centres and shopping centres in and around train stations, but these get scant attention in Australia – if any. Yet being big generators of people traffic, it would make sense to co-locate transport infrastructure that can move a lot of people with land uses that also generate a lot of traffic.

A recent visit to Tokyo highlighted for me what is possible. Under an elevated Tokyo expressway were strips of ground floor shops and restaurants, with offices above (immediately below the expressway). And a nearby elevated rail line made full use of the space underneath the line to house a variety of restaurants in what would otherwise be a void.

Tokyo expressway above, shops and offices below.

 

Rail lines above, restaurants below.

 

In Kyoto, the line between where the rail station begins and where the hotel, full department store, supermarket and shopping centre begin are indistinguishable. It’s a full integration.

This is also transit oriented development because it makes better use of the infrastructure. Sadly though I suspect we won’t see much of this alternative dialogue in Australia. We seem locked into thinking that transit oriented development is one thing and one thing only: high density towers offering high cost housing clustered around train stations which don’t necessarily take people where they want to go.

That might explain why TODs will remain something much talked about in planning and political circles, but when it comes to the market, there may be a less enthusiastic response.