Palo Alto PTOD (Pedestrian Transit Oriented Development) Traffic Reducing Housing

7/10/06 revision, by Steve Raney, Cities21

Palo Alto is a national innovator in Traffic Reducing Housing (TRH), having shrewdly added TRH to Stanford West and the "December 2004 El Camino Soccer Field + Housing" Agreement. The PTOD-TRH program described on this page evolves innovative TRH policies {from Stanford West, Stanford Faculty/Staff Housing, Santa Barbara’s Casa de Las Fuentes, and Novato’s Hamilton Park} to an even higher level.  Casa de Las Fuentes has 42 homes in the vibrant pedestrian/transit-oriented Santa Barbara downtown, with only 16 cars (for more details, see: http://www.cities21.org/CasaDeLasFuentes.htm.)

Palo Alto Council is providing national global warming leadership, with efforts including the Mayor's Green Ribbon Task Force on Climate Protection.  PTOD-TRH represents the most cost-effective CO2 reduction that Council can implement.  Compared to the rest of the Silicon Valley, 547 new PTOD-TRH homes will produce three million annual pounds less of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas and produce three million fewer annual VMT (vehicle miles traveled). These residents will save $2,500 per year in auto operation costs and will avoid one hour per weekday stuck in commute traffic.  

PTOD, as the name suggests, is for pedestrian/transit maximization and automobile minimization.  The TRH program will select new residents with fewer cars who will drive less. New residents intending to drive a lot have many better Palo Alto housing options than moving next to a train station.   

Goals:

• Minimize greenhouse gas emissions to create a better world for our children.
• Minimize inconvenience caused to existing neighbors by minimizing resultant parking demand and by minimizing resultant traffic congestion at the already congested local intersections, especially around peak commuting hours.
• Reduce real-estate development costs to ensure that PTOD real-estate developers make a good profit and are sufficiently enthusiastic about their experience to promote innovative transit village development to their peers.
• Implement a policy that achieves these goals initially and also achieves these goals in ensuing months, years, and decades as jobs change and new residents move in.

It Works! TRH was pioneered in Palo Alto / Stanford.

• "The most cost-effective traffic 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 (Joe Kott's employer), and former member of Stanford's transportation department.

How important is TRH? Crucially important!  Here's what the experts are saying:

• "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." See pages 14-15, 17-19: http://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/morguepdf/2006/2006_06_21.paw.section1.pdf
• In the Weekly article directly above, 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."
• Fran Wagstaff, Mid-Peninsula Housing Coalition, TRH "is a great idea."
• William Fulton (author: The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl): TRH "is certainly a very timely topic and many people are looking for answers … I am asked for answer to this all the time, both in my professional capacity and in my elected capacity (Ventura City Council)." TRH "is potentially very important."
• Stephanie Jennings, former Editor of Fannie Mae Foundation's Housing Policy Debate: TRH "has a lot of potential."

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 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 (4% 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.  

PTOD-TRH Policy Implementation 

PTOD is a new zone in the Palo Alto General Plan Update.  To minimize traffic, Council should adopt the following: a) find a "compelling interest" in the goals above, b) select new residents with fewer cars who will drive less, c) minimize residential parking spaces, d) "unbundle" residential parking, meaning residents should be charged $50 per month per parking space, e) encourage the sharing of adjacent parking spaces (at Agilent and Caltrain) with new residential developments. 

The approval of major new residential PTOD projects will then be contingent on meeting these adopted items. 

Council's implementation of PTOD Zoning will result in a 25 percent land value increase in those areas and will reduce parking construction costs.  Both of these benefits make PTOD real-estate development more profitable; therefore, Council should not "give away" the PTOD designation to developers without ensuring that the most transit and pedestrian-friendly place is created.    

A more detailed explanation of PTOD-TRH can be found at: http://www.cities21.org/workerHsngPaloAlto.htm

Cities21's TRH research has been funded by a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency "Collaborative Network for Sustainability" grant: http://tod.hacienda.org/PRT/epa.htm.  TRH research has included three “roundtable” meetings and 30 individual meetings.  Meeting participants have represented EPA, HUD, Urban Land Institute, National Housing Law Project, Reconnecting America, National Association of Realtors, Berkeley Program on Housing, California State Housing & Community Development Department, California State Senate Transportation and Housing Committee, ABAG, MTC, Silicon Valley Leadership Group, AIA Housing Policy Committee, Urban Ecology, Sierra Club, Fair Housing of Marin, Washington Regional Network for Livable Communities, Virginia Tech Department of Urban Affairs and Planning, and planning department staff members from multiple cities.