Empty Spaces webinar confronts parking at transit-oriented developments

Smart Growth America hosted a webinar Jan. 31 on NITC research finding that standard guidelines lead to a drastic oversupply of parking at transit-oriented developments. That restricts the supply of housing, office and retail space while driving up the price.

The webinar marks the release of Smart Growth America's lay summary of the NITC report, called "Empty Spaces," which will be available to webinar attendees.

Watch the recorded webinar here.

The research, led by Reid Ewing of the University of Utah, is one of the first comprehensive data-driven reports to estimate peak parking and vehicle trip generation rates for transit-oriented development projects, as well as one of the first to estimate travel mode shares for TODs. Ewing analyzed data on actual parking usage and total trip generation near five transit stations: Redmond, Washington; Rhode Island Row in Washington, D.C.; Fruitvale Village in Oakland, California; Englewood, Colorado; and Wilshire/Vermont in Los...

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Getting to Know the Data: Understanding assumptions, sensitivities, uncertainty, and being "conservative" while using ITE's Trip Generation Data in the Land Development Process

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Many agencies rely on trip generation estimates to evaluate the transportation impacts of land development in urban and suburban areas alike. Over the past decade, substantial attention has been paid to one national set of guidelines—the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Trip Generation Handbook (2014) and corresponding Manual (2012)—focusing in particular to improve the use of these data and supplementary methods for urban contexts. 

The purpose of this study is to explore the typical data provided in the Handbook, within the context of these new improved state-of-the-art methods. As ITE’s describes, “an example of poor professional judgment is to rely on rules of thumb without understanding or considering their derivation or initial context” (Institute of Transportation Engineers, 2014, p. 3). This research aims to improve the understanding of these data—still ubiquitously used across the US—to encourage increased engagement with their meaning, and following, to provide the users (e.g., engineering, planners, agencies, and developers) with the landscape from which these data were collected and for which they represent. From here, more informed decisions can be made about whether these data provide an adequate or accurate estimation transportation impacts within varying contexts...

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