ABN Town Meeting I: "Manhattan vs. Pleasantville: Traffic, Density, and 'Quality of Life'—What Kind of City are we Building?"
April 3, 2002


Summary of Participant Comments

The session crystallized two different images of good neighborhood life: one more suburban and the other more urban:

TWO DIVERGENT VISIONS OF QUALITY OF LIFE

  • We should limit density in the neighborhoods to existing or lower levels and require all projects to build ample off-street parking, to reduce parking competition and decrease traffic, and to improve the quality of life by avoiding congestion and crowding, promoting stability through homeownership, and protecting privacy, open space, views, a quiet environment, and property values

  • We should build enough mixed-use density to support public transit and build without parking as the way to reduce parking competition and traffic, and improve the quality of life by making a walkable, jobs/housing-balanced, socially diverse, economically lively neighborhood.

Many suggestions, general and specific, were voiced by the participants. An edited summary of general principles and a list of specific suggestions follow.

GENERAL PRINCIPLES

  • We need comprehensive planning at neighborhood, city, region and State levels to coordinate development and transportation.

  • We need effective zoning, which reflects planning and is enforced.

  • We need public education on the impacts of automobile use and on hidden public subsidies to cars.

  • We should ally for better public transit with suburban neighbors, environmentalists, and developers.

  • We should present unified community voices, rather than mixed messages, to agencies and developers at public meetings.

  • The planning process should include community residents and planning/environmental experts .

  • We need adequate public funding for public transportation; highway funds should be diverted to better transit balance; we need private funding of some parts of the transit system.

SPECIFIC SUGGESTIONS:

MANAGE CAR USE TO DISCOURAGE DRIVING

Residential parking permits

  • Provide permit for rental cars, to reduce ownership need
  • Require fee for permit
  • Require fee for permits beyond the first per household
  • Only one permit per household
  • Permit only for households without parking on property
  • No permits for new housing

Zoning requirements to provide parking

  • Reduce minimum required parking ratio in new development
  • Eliminate parking requirement, require variance for spaces
  • Cap parking by modeling area-wide carrying capacity
  • Require Zipcar spaces replacing parking spaces in projects

Make drivers pay their true cost

  • Impose smog tax (use funds for neighborhood shuttle buses)
  • Raise tolls to recover costs (as fares were raised)
  • Graduate excise tax by fuel rating
  • Strengthen parking freeze
  • Remove freeze exemption for "accessory use" parking
  • Reduce inventory on South Boston freeze now being set
  • Enforce conditional requirements in Restricted Parking Overlay Districts

Don't design roads to encourage driving

  • Traffic calming (speed bumps, pedestrian walk signals, no turn lanes, etc.)
  • Narrower road lane widths
  • No road widening, turn lanes
  • Add curbside parking
  • Add bike lane
  • Give priority to transit in signalization

Control through-traffic

  • Require project traffic studies to analyze corridor-long impacts
  • Study re-routing of through traffic to other neighborhoods

Stop public parking subsidies

  • Prohibit parking use of "yard sale" land
  • Eliminate public parking lots
  • Stop building commuter-rail parking lots, use existing lots for transit-oriented development

MANAGE DEVELOPMENT

  • Limit new development (land use, density) to meet feasible parking capacity and to control traffic
  • Build enough mixed-use density to make walkable neighborhood (job/housing balance,local stores)
  • Exclude buildable lots from "yard sales," require use for housing
  • Build enough density to justify mass transit
  • Build to support, not displace, existing residents, with mixed-use, neighborhood-serving development that doesn't encourage speculation
  • Restrict new market-rate housing to year-round dwellers
    (Legality? Enforceability?)

IMPROVE TRANSIT

  • Complete CA/T transit commitments
  • Fill gaps to make transit support daily living needs (extend hours, more frequency, more routes, neighborhood shuttles)
  • More amenity on transit
  • More reverse commute schedules, routes
  • More suburban transit
  • More inter-city transit lines
  • Lower fares, or free transit, to attract car users