Let the Sunshine Belt be the light to brighten our future.

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In Policy Support for and Barriers to Transit-Oriented Development in the Inner City, Daniel Baldwin Hess, and Peter A. Lombardi state,
“Clearly, transit stations in older cities are already located in places where they can serve the highest number of residences and workplaces; in these places, spillover development into neighborhoods adjacent to transit stations demonstrates the mutually reinforcing relationship (often taken for granted) between transit services and urban development. Unlike the Sunbelt cities, which saw the majority of their growth occur during automobile dominated times, development along transit corridors is so customary in older cities that they rarely call it TOD; it’s simply regular development”(p.29).
The Sunshine belt has the unfortunate design that is the result of a failed plan that relies on personal automobiles. Many urban planners today seem to recognize the problems that come from urban sprawl. As Reid Ewing points out in “Is Los Angeles Style Sprawl Desirable” there isn’t a consensus on what exactly urban sprawl is, but for this post, I’ll include all 4 characterizations mentioned in the table 1 on page 108.


  • Low density development
  • Strip development
  • Scattered development
  • Leapfrog development

Many sunbelt regions have some or all of these characteristics, and because of this sprawling development, reliance on personal automobiles is an unfortunate reality. I don’t believe most people enjoy repeatedly driving long distances, and I’m even more confident in saying most people don’t like paying lots of money for car maintenance, fuel, insurance, parking, etc. And i’m most confident that almost no people like traffic congestion, traffic fatalities, pollution, or Sparky getting hit by a car. Despite all these daily occurrences and escalating problems, we continue to rely on a failed system because it’s hard to replace. In “Access to Choice” Jonathan Levine points out that many critics of land use transportation policy argue that
“it is reasonable to believe that households select residences to match their travel preferences”(p.16).
It’s hard to believe that people move to the suburbs or rural areas because they want to drive more!
Hess & Lombardi mention that,
“In places with density high enough to support rail transit, rail transit is difficult to build because of land assembly, the high expense of construction cost, and the nuisance of construction disruption” (p.30).
This seems to be one of the rail transit planner’s dilemmas; easily build trains where they aren’t useful, or struggle to put them where they would be of great use. The sprawling regions in the sunbelt, could have light rail with more miles, more efficient placement, and lower cost, but who would ride them? I think it’s time for a sprawling region to be the light rail guinea pig. I’d be interested to see what would happen if a transit utopia sprung up somewhere in the south. How about the next new suburb spurring off of some southern metropolis, that is easily accessible by train or bike path, with an auxiliary automobile toll road that is available for when people absolutely need a personal vehicle?


Wells Wait
Edited by Sofia Alvarez-Castro


References

Hess, D.B.; Lombardi, P.A. (2004). Policy support for and barriers to transit-oriented development in the inner city. Journal of the transportation board. Washington D.C. p. 26-33
Levine, J. (1999). Access to choice. Access, Spring 1999, p. 16-19
Ewing, R. (1997). Is Los Angeles style sprawl desirable? Journal of the American Planning Association, Winter, p. 94-126

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