A conceptual framework and implementation tool for land use planning for corridor transit oriented development

Abstract

Transit-oriented development (TOD) has gained worldwide popularity because of its potential to help communities achieve sustainability goals. The current practice of TODs has largely focused on individual transit station sites or TOD nodes, not fully capturing the corridor advantages associated with transit systems. This study develops a conceptual framework and an implementation tool for planning corridor TOD (C-TOD). C-TOD expands the conventional nodal TOD concept and practice to 1) capture corridor level interactions between individual TOD nodes, and 2) incorporate economic, social, and environmental indicators with the physical planner/design attributes for modeling and evaluating C-TOD plans. Conceptually, the study defines C-TOD spatially as individuals' travel shed within a travel time budget of 55–65 min along the transit service segment of 15–20 miles (stations). Operationally, the C-TOD tool measures TOD site attributes with 5D variables (Density, Diversity, Design, Distance to Transit, and Destination Accessibility) and quantifies three sustainability indicators in the C-TOD context with transit premiums, total accessibility to services and housing opportunities, and building and household travel emissions. To implement the multi-objective C-TOD tool, the study applies genetic algorithms to search, assess, and identify optimal C-TOD alternatives under user-specified planning and policy targets and constraints. A case study of Metro Line #2 in Wuhan, China, is presented to illustrate the C-TOD framework and optimization tool. As mass rapid transit systems continue to expand around the world, the C-TOD concept and tool introduced in this study can help practitioners and policy makers to augment TOD applications with improved land use planning and decision-making.