I think a lot of the issues with transit are reflective of the Chicago region’s weak post-nineties growth—2000-2010 was a particularly saggy decade for Chicago, particularly relative to comparatively well-educated places like SF and Boston.
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Originally Posted by ardecila
Most of the transit-shed decline is due to the demolitions of CHA projects, which tended to sit right by transit stations. IIRC over 18000 units were removed from the market.
The upside is that this gives Chicago plenty of land with convenient transit access for development, and smart planning could make it dense. But the CHA projects themselves were very dense and so far, the powers that be are pursuing lowrise housing models with tons of wasted open space (look at the amount of open space in the site plan for Oakwood Shores, for instance).
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Look at the map on page 29 of the report, which shows change in households over 2000-10 in the Chicago region. With the exception of a couple islands, the station areas between outer suburbia and the core is either bleeding population (particular on the west and south sides, plus adjacent suburban areas) or stagnant—this latter category includes many of the predominantly middle-class single-family suburbs, but also a number of dense areas on the north side along the Red and Brown lines. You’re basically seeing the effects of frozen land use there—single-family, owner-occupied suburban housing is one of the hardest things to redevelop into something other than larger single-family, owner-occupied suburban housing, and basically all the urban north side neighborhoods are pretty solidly NIMBYfied as well.
I can’t help but think that a lot of this is non-transportation/land use related, too—Chicago rents and land prices are, compared to Boston and SF, fairly cheap. There’s not as much incentive towards redeveloping a lot of neighborhoods at higher density, and one of the things people like about Chicago is that they can live in a city with lots of suburban amenities—you can live in a bungalow in Edgewater, have a yard, and be steps away from the Granville Red Line stop (or single-family housing near Roosevelt Orange). People howl over four-story buildings in Bucktown.
Urbs in Horto, just forget the
urbs. Although big stretches of vacant/underutilized land are problems, so is not allowing more people to live in neighborhoods where people actually want to live.
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The suburbs have only seen minor gains aroud Metra stops, and it's unclear to me whether the quality and frequency of Metra service is actually enough to attract significant housing growth.
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The report picks out the example of Elmhurst as a place where there’s been an attempt at fostering transit-oriented development that hasn’t worked out as planned. They weren’t able to succeed—a lot of that probably has to do with non-policy-related stuff, like developers not seeing Elmhurst as a good candidate for higher-density housing, developers wanting to build higher-density housing being laughed out of the bank (“Seven-story condos, in
Elmhurst!”), and, as the report notes, not willing to accept higher-density housing for people without high incomes. And, of course, if it’s a soft decade for growth in the Chicago metro it’s a soft decade for new construction—no one’s going to densify without demand.
UP-West service is pretty dismal—people from communities directly served by the line
actually will drive to BNSF stations. However, I think transit advocates generally underestimate the effect of job sprawl. If I’m relocating to the Chicago region and pick Elmhurst, it might be because I work in Cumberland and the sig. other works in Yorktown. Or Schaumburg and Hines. Or Oak Brook and downtown. Even with improved Metra service, you’re only serving one market among several:
(source: distance/direction analysis for primary jobs of people living in Elmhurst via
http://onthemap.ces.census.gov/).
You won’t get any argument from me that downtown is important, should be strengthened, and transit links to it be improved, but better transit will, at this point, only make transit more dominant in a niche (even if it’s the largest one). It won’t transform the orientation of suburbs and suburban commuters.