Traffic Reducing Housing (TRH)

First Version, Fall 2005.  Last updated 12/8//06

NEW: New Urban News Article: Housing Preferences for Green Commuters, December 2006, Page 9: http://www.cities21.org/newUrbanNewsDec06.pdf 

For new apartments and condos, Traffic Reducing Housing (TRH) selects residents with fewer cars who will drive less.

TRH has huge potential benefits. Such preferences are best applied in major metropolitan areas suffering both severe traffic congestion and housing affordability problems. Such preferences create "win/win/win/win/win" outcomes for cities, residents/workers, employers, neighbors, and developers. Locating housing next to jobs will:

• decrease particulate/greenhouse emissions, vehicle miles traveled, and gasoline consumption.
• minimize inconvenience caused to existing neighbors by minimizing resultant traffic congestion at the already congested local intersections, especially around peak commuting hours.  
• improve quality of life for TRH worker/residents: a) increase family time, b) reduce commute stress, c) reduce the cost of living by reducing auto  ownership/operation costs. 
• allow workers to walk and bike to work.
• reduce regional pressure to grow outside the inner suburban ring / greenbelt.
• enable land-constrained cities to more easily meet state mandated "regional housing needs assessments."
• reduce employee turnover by providing better quality of life.
• improve areas afflicted with jobs/housing imbalance.

How important is Walk to Work housing? Crucially important!

• "The most cost-effective peak hour trip reduction in the Bay Area is to provide housing for workers. Stanford makes money on the housing when they match housing and jobs. This is a traffic reduction measure with a 'negative cost.' " - Jeffrey Tumlin, Principal, Nelson Nygaard Associates transportation consultants.
• Governor Schwarzenegger's housing vision: "each community should house its own."
• "An increasing number of Silicon Valley workers have been forced to live farther and farther away from their jobs, with thousands having to commute two to three hours a day, one way, to get to work. This underlines the importance of creating housing in the Silicon Valley not only to improve workers' quality of life but also to cut down on traffic and air pollution" - Carl Guardino, CEO, Silicon Valley Leadership Group (Portsmouth Herald, March 2001).
• Palo Alto Weekly's Sue Dremann covered Palo Alto's global climate change efforts in the June 21, 2006, lead article.  "Getting people out of their cars is one solution, and closely related would be creating a blueprint for making home and work spaces easily accessible without driving.  One working model is at Stanford University, where priority in housing is given to people who work there.  At Stanford West, people who work at the hospital can bike to work." Palo Alto Councilmember Peter Drekmeier characterizes the TRH opportunity: "Proximity is more important than the efficiency of a vehicle. Our biggest impact on climate change is driving." See pages 14-15, 17-19: http://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/morguepdf/2006/2006_06_21.paw.section1.pdf

Is there another answer besides TRH? No!

While Anthony Downs (Brookings Scholar and author: Still Stuck in Traffic) advises commuters to learn to cope with traffic congestion delay in the short run, he believes that, in the long run, jobs and housing will eventually move together or "co-locate." From an analysis of current research, Berkeley's Robert Cervero disagrees that co-location will come about without intervention. He concludes that the natural incentives for people to reduce the distance between work and home have not been working. "Average journey to work distance has been increasing; jobs/housing balance continues to exacerbate." Thus, we conclude that co-location is very important, but we need to implement policy measures to reduce the distance between jobs and housing. 

Is transit-oriented developed (TOD) without TRH actually transit-oriented?  No.  Suburban residential TOD serving auto-supportive jobs results in "auto-centered TOD."  Per Travel Characteristics of TOD in California (Caltrans funded research authored by Lund, Cervero, and Willson), residential TOD by East Bay BART heavy rail stations serving “auto-hostile” job locations in San Francisco produces 40% transit commute mode share (and 50% auto share).  Residential TOD by South Bay Caltrain commuter rail stations serving auto-supportive job locations with free parking produces only 17% transit mode share (and 80% auto share).  Thus, South Bay TOD, while outperforming adjacent non-TOD (5% or less transit mode share), is still very auto-centered. TRH can transform South Bay TOD mode share to 80% "green commutes."  

Many Bay Area cities have preferences (or have considered preferences) for teachers, public safety officers, and/or public employees, but none of these programs provides significant traffic reduction compared to TRH.  These cities include Cupertino, Larkspur, Los Altos, Menlo Park, Milpitas, Mountain View, Oakland, San Anselmo, San Carlos, San Jose, San Francisco, San Rafael, Sunnyvale, Tiburon, and Walnut Creek.  

Three pioneering TRH examples: Stanford, Santa Barbara, Redwood City

1) Stanford West: 628 apartments

Stanford provides priority to local workers with very short commutes, saving 2.6 million annual vehicle miles traveled and 2.6 million annual pounds of CO2.  Stanford West residents with green commutes receive a 10 percent monthly rent discount.  Stanford provides a top-notch shuttle bus system and an extensive dedicated bike path network.  Stanford charges $51 per month for employees to park on campus, and that parking isn't very convenient.  

2) Santa Barbara's Casa de Las Fuentes

For 42 affordable downtown apartments with excellent access to jobs, shops, recreation, and transit, Santa Barbara adopted green commute housing preferences:

• First priority: for residents who work downtown who do not own a vehicle and agree to not own one during their occupancy.  Rent is $50 per month less for residents who do not park a car.  All employed household members must work only in the downtown area.  
• Second priority: for residents who work downtown

The 42 unit development has only TWENTY CARS! 

3) Redwood City's Peninsula Park - 800 condos

This project is still in the planning stages, but represents the U.S.'s first proposal to apply TRH to market rate condos.  Redwood City has a vibrant mixed-use downtown with a Caltrain commuter rail station. There are 85,000 jobs within 3 miles of the project site. The Peninsula Park project will feature a 0.8 mile bike path to downtown and a 1.4 mile shuttle bus route to downtown.  The developer's banker has already approved TRH - that's an important occurrence that should be noted.  Innovations such as these are not readily supported by the real-estate lending community.