How Cities Can Increase Density & Avoid Concurrency Issues Using High Frequency Transit/TOD

This paper describes how transportation is one of the most important aspects of a community’s infrastructure and it has tremendous influence on its land use decisions, rates of growth and quality of life. Not only is the transportation network a factor in the determination of how well a city works, but if left alone (be free from excessive and often competing local government regulations), a region's land use patterns can influence in a positive way the building of transportation modes that provide for the needs of interurban travelers by allowing transit to be an attractive alternative to the private automobile. Since the implementation of federal highway legislation in 1954, the automobile has become the dominate form of transportation in the nation's cities and everywhere else. Highways in urban areas, a lack of marketable urban infill construction and various growth management programs supported by state and local governments, have contributed to urban sprawl. This phenomenon is characterized by low-density, single-family suburban development. All of which has brought about the decline of public transit as a mode of interurban travel. This development has: (1) caused a great disconnect between the areas where people work and where they live; (2) encouraged development in areas not served by public transit; and (3) created a pattern of development in suburban areas that ensures dependence on the automobile as the primary means of travel for every need.