Integrated Transit Design

Building acceptance through an integrated design approach and making a difference in the community.

 What creates community support?

Flawless operations, good engineering and cost efficiency are must-have ingredients of any transit project. However, public perception, support and ultimately use and relationship to a transit project is rarely measured by those core criteria. Rather what matters for community acceptance is how riders and non riders experience the system. How attractive and convenient the system is, how transit “behaves in the community”, how it fits into the community day in and day out with all its hard (trains, guideways, stations etc.)and soft elements (operations, mobility and equity enhancements, community improvements, place making) and how it has leveraged positive change. Many of these aspects which were once considered tangential are now central in the evaluations of the federal government for funding. (Livable Communities Initiatives).

Modern light rail lines have a lot in common and are also different in many ways. They share that, they run for large parts on the surface and often in existing communities and public right of ways. Once in place, they will become part of the public realm. This makes them not only highly visibility but also requires mitigation of potential conflicts with existing circulation and existing use of the area and a grasp of what areas might look like many years from now. Systems that will mostly be placed into an existing built environment need to not only “fit in” but also contribute to positive change where the existing settings are disinvested, characterized by underutilized land or visually less than desirable.

To achieve this, the process of designing and engineering the preferred alignments  must be organized around the principles of Integrated Design (ID).

"Place Making" could be a component of Integrated Design such as an intermodal transit plaza
which also acts as a community center and catalyst for new development

 What does Integrated Design (ID) mean?

Generally, ID can be applied to design in many cases (buildings, cars, transit etc). The constituting element is interdisciplinary collaboration and inclusion of a multitude of consideration and goals early in the project. Integrated design is not a cumulative linear process in which layer is placed over layer. Instead it is an interdisciplinary approach where many performance and outcome objectives are considered concurrently and early. Thus, a project evolves in optimization loops rather than in a linear way. In the case of light rail transit integrated design means that the core engineering aspects and the soft community concerns need to be comprehensively evaluated at every step of the design process and across all specialties.  Fully integrated design also means that design and engineering do not stop at the limits of transit construction or at property lines but go seamlessly deep into the communities along the corridor. Integrated design means full and consistent collaboration between the community, property owners, stakeholders, jurisdictional agencies, all transit providers and the MTA with the goal to transform communities so that they become better through the proposed transit.

 Truly integrated design is more complicated initially but saves money in the design process itself, possibly also in the construction and certainly for operation and maintenance. Fruitless battles and conflicts as well as dead ends due to lack of information can be avoided. Seamless integration of transit into the community will enhance ridership, operations and community support of the system. Integrated design will leverage land use and allow aspects of value capture to be channeled back into construction or operations.

How can integrated design be accomplished?

 In spite of many participatory efforts of transit agencies and local jurisdictions with the objective of better understanding community needs and creating community acceptance, transit design and engineering processes are still predominantly driven by single discipline considerations and linear processes (one step after another) rather than a comprehensive integration of design and performance standards. Speed, initial cost and engineering functionality tend to outweigh the “softer” and often less quantifiable benefits, especially long-term benefits, even though these benefits might well outweigh short term cost benefits in the long run. The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has signaled that they would like to soften up their rigid cost effectiveness formula for federally funded "New Starts" projects, yet, so far these formulas are still in effect.

An effective way towards integrated design would be collaboration between the transit agency, the design team, community stakeholders and jurisdictional representatives on the creation of design guidelines early in a project process. This would establish criteria for integrated design are early on from which future steps can be measured and evaluated.

A key component of design guidelines would be a succinct project description that goes beyond the “Purpose and Need”statements required by FTA. The project description would be a short synopsis that tries to encapsulate what kind of project a transit project wants to be and what its aspiration are in terms as community game changers.

Guidelines could be developed with a system or corridor wide "universal" component ("system branding") and a location specific set of guidelines for specific geographies within the planned corridor.

• “Universal” design guidelines establish goals and standards for the full transit system and its relation to the community and for all elements that are visible or affect the appearance or “behavior” of the proposed transit. The guidelines are not only numeric or expressed in details but they express holistic urban design performance and include benchmarks and comparables derived from already built systems that would provide a baseline standard.

• Specific guidelines addressing conditions that are unique to the spatial and functional qualities and settings of corridor segments or station locations and their geographies.  

What should be addressed by Integrated Design Guidelines?

1.     Description of the transit systems goals in terms of branding, transit rider experience, interaction of the system with the community and urban design.

2.     Branding  of transit system identity in terms of system design and interaction with its surroundings

a.     Elements of continuity corridor or system-wide versus elements of local idiosyncrasy

b.     Way-finding and signs

c.      Visibility versus mimicry of the system 

3.     Rules for full integration of station areas for seamless circulation and access from surrounding areas and all other modes of movement

a.     Walking

b.     Bicycle access

c.      Car parking and drop off

d.     Bus access

e.     Other rail transit access

f.       Access to and from attractions

4.     Integration of land use around station for and enhanced activity (eyes on the street), convenience safety and security and transit supportive land use through optimal “place-making”

a.     Retail

b.     Workplaces

c.      Attractions

d.     Housing

e.     Outdoor uses

5.     Guidance for tapping into economic development opportunities

a.     Use of publicly owned land

b.     Better use of vacant or underutilized property

c.      Transformation of car oriented uses to transit supportive uses

d.     Services for community and transit riders alike

e.     Value capture (leveraging the transit investment for land use)

6.     Guidance for street-scaping and design of the corridor in terms of visual and functional integration of the system between stations

a.     Guideway design, traction power design

b.     Transformed opportunities for adjacent public ROW

7.     Criteria for (environmental) sustainability of all proposed transit components

a.     Guideway, pervious/impervious surfaces (stormwater, heat island)

b.     Power consumption, water consumption

c.      Natural ventilation

8.     Criteria for Art Inclusion

9.     Guidance for efficiency and maintenance for sheltering, weather protection, services and conveniences necessary for the transit user

10.  Guidance for understanding and reflecting the social, economical, ethnic and functional diversities of the specific geographic areas and the future plans and visions developed for those areas for the time of the expected transit service (5-50 year horizon).

Related to Integrated Design are the topics of "Whole Building Design" and "Integrated Project Delivery". See below links for more information.

Link for "Whole Building Design"

Link for Integrated Project Delivery