Successful TOD results in reduced per capita motor vehicle travel and associated traffic fatalities, household transportation costs, energy consumption and environmental footprint. Furthermore, TOD promotes economic development while improving housing affordability.
TODs are defined by dense land use combined with high quality public transport services able to serve large numbers of people efficiently, such as buses or rail lines.
Residential Density
Residential density is an integral element of transit-oriented development and can be measured using various metrics, such as units per acre, people per square mile or dwellings per hectare. Each measure may give different insight into what’s being examined but fundamentally they all represent how many people live within an area.
An ideal transit-oriented neighborhood comprises of high density residential, retail and cultural activity located within walking distance from an excellent transit station. This allows residents to live, work and play without needing a car while decreasing demand for new automobile infrastructure.
Residential density is measured as a net measure that accounts for all residential structures – such as driveways and private yards – but excludes public rights-of-way, parks, open space and any non-residential uses like non-residential buildings or parks. This differs from gross density which includes all these non-residential uses but may provide misleading comparisons of different areas. Transit accessibility remains the key factor when measuring residential density.
Commercial Density
TOD neighborhoods consist of commercial and residential districts located within walking distance of a transit station or corridor, designed for cycling and walking using Universal Design principles, with Parking Management to reduce vehicle parking space requirements compared with conventional development, and Carsharing programs to promote alternatives to owning automobiles (Venner and Ecola 2007).
TOD neighborhoods tend to feature higher employment density compared to their surrounding areas and contain businesses catering to diverse customer bases, which helps increase retail activity and enhance local economic development.
Quality transit expands the possibilities for TOD by moving commuter trips away from peak times and offering urban centers that support higher densities an agglomeration benefit. Increased property values and various cost-saving measures offered by TOD projects can also stimulate TOD development, spurring on compact development in an area, increasing its property values by 5-15% (Heres, Jack and Salon 2014). One such example is Portland streetcar line’s contribution to creating new compact development that increased property values 5-15% (Heres, Jack and Salon 2014). Pollack, Gartsman and Wood (2013) developed the eTOD Station Area Rating System to identify factors influencing households with less cars to rely more heavily on alternative modes for daily travel needs, including walking, bicycling, public transit and carsharing.
Pedestrian Orientation
Transit-oriented development not only reduces per capita vehicle ownership and travel, but it also encourages physical activity through walking links between destinations (Litman 2008). Amenities such as awnings can provide extra shelter from rain or sun for pedestrians.
Pedestrian orientation recognition is one of the more difficult problems in computer vision. Compared with vehicles, pedestrians possess more complex appearances including colors and patterns on clothing or ornaments – which makes them harder for monocular solutions to distinguish. Furthermore, pedestrians tend to be smaller than traffic objects which makes recognizing their specific orientations harder.
This paper proposes a graph structure-based approach to pedestrian orientation classification using deep neural networks. Specifically, CNN feature maps are converted into graphs and the GRAN method applied efficiently to learn an adjacency matrix with carefully considered edge weights for body parts graph classification. Furthermore, recurrent decoders propagate features for orientation recognition.
Parking Management
TOD requires changes to zoning and development standards that may be opposed by some residents; however, the benefits far outweigh any such potential concerns.
TOD requires careful management of parking facilities, with dynamically priced strategies recommended to vary fees depending on supply and demand – this may help determine trip timing decisions as well as facility selection during periods of peak congestion.
TODs should be designed with clear separations between pedestrians, autos, buses and trains for optimal accessibility of commuters, which ensure safe access to transit stations while encouraging walking, cycling and ride-sharing activities. This also encourages participation in ride sharing programs.
TOD communities must also promote and subsidize transportation options that offer alternatives to driving, such as transit, bikeshare, carsharing, telework and walkable office developments. TODs should also offer information and resources related to these forms of travel – Pay-and-Display systems can help streamline payment processes while providing real-time data.