Jarrett Walker

Should transit be slow?

Transit consultant & Human Transit blogger, Apr 28, 10.

Tagged with transportation, urban planning, transit

For a while now, a strain of urbanist thought has been asking: Should we want transit to be slower?

That, broadly speaking, is the question raised by Professor Patrick M. Condon at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Condon heads the Design Centre for Sustainability inside UBC’s Department of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and is the author of the very useful book Design Charrettes for Sustainable Communities. In his 2008 paper “The Case for the Tram: Learning from Portland,” he explicitly states a radical idea that many urban planners are thinking about, but that not many of them say in public. He suggests that the whole idea of moving large volumes of people relatively quickly across an urban region, as “rapid transit” systems do, is problematic or obsolete:

The question of operational speed conjures up a larger issue: who exactly are the intended beneficiaries of enhanced mobility? A high speed system is best if the main intention is to move riders quickly from one side of the region to the other. Lower operational speeds are better if your intention is to best serve city districts with easy access within them and to support a long term objective to create more complete communities, less dependent on twice-daily cross-region trips.

It’s an interesting question, and it’s having a significant if not always visible impact on transport planning. Darrin Nordahl’s 2009 book My Kind of Transit, reviewed here, also praises slow transit; he makes that case in the same way you’d advocate for “slow food,” by pointing to the richness of experience that comes only from slowing down.

Professor Condon is interested in the urban form implications of slower transit, for which his paradigm is the Portland Streetcar, a tram in mixed traffic, stopping every 500 feet or so, that glides attractively but slowly (averaging 15 km/h, 9 mph) through the redeveloping Pearl District. Clearly, the Portland Streetcar drove not just a dramatic densification of the inner city areas it served, but a pedestrian-friendly mixed-use urban form where many of life’s needs are within walking distance. That much is undeniable. In Todd Litman’s terms, which I explored here, the Portland Streetcar may not have provided much mobility but it certainly improved access. But is that a reason to build lots of streetcars, and stop building rapid transit, as Condon proposes?