TOD News

Don Stacom | Courant

The New Haven to Springfield commuter rail service that’s scheduled to begin in 2016 will be called the Hartford Line, said Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who announced Friday that station construction will start this fall in Wallingford, Meriden and Berlin.

Running a high-frequency schedule of trains along the Amtrak route paralleling I-91 will get traffic off the highway, reduce workers’ commute time, and encourage new retail and housing development around the stations up and down the line, according to Malloy and the state transportation department.

The single track carries about six long-distance Amtrak trains each way daily, chiefly aimed at feeding its Northeast Corridor service between Boston, New York City and Washington, D.C. Connecticut plans to add a second track along most of the route, and run 12 to 17 trains a day, mostly for commuters.

The Hartford Line service will link Connecticut River Valley communities with more than a dozen others in New Haven, Fairfield and Westchester counties.

Workers have been installing signals and underground cables along the New Haven-to-Hartford-to-Springfield line, and will now begin construction at three key stations. They’ll add high-level platforms on both sides of the track, overhead pedestrian bridges with new elevators, snow-melting systems for the platforms, and public address and video surveillance equipment. Read more

Staff | UTA

On the heels of the groundbreaking of the East Village transit-oriented development in Sandy, attended by U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, UTA is moving forward with its second transit oriented development (TOD) in West Jordan City. Today the Board of Trustees approved the conveyance of land surrounding the Jordan Valley TRAX Station to the joint venture entity established with the chosen developer.

The $40 million first phase of the Jordan Valley Station TOD, called Bangerter Station, will be a model multi-use TOD, with 267 housing units, retail shops, and structured parking within walking distance of the Jordan Valley TRAX station.

“This is a great moment for West Jordan City, UTA and the entire Salt Lake Valley. When it is completed, Bangerter Station will be a vibrant part of the city, providing a great place to live and work,” said Michael Allegra, UTA president and CEO. “Bangerter Station will be a great destination with excellent transit access, reducing traffic congestion while improving air quality.”

When all phases are complete, Bangerter Station will boast nearly 1,400 residential units, 83,000 square feet of office space, structured parking, and nearly 35,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space.

Located next to the TRAX Red Line, the development will provide easy access to major destinations in the valley including the University of Utah, downtown Salt Lake City, the Jordan Landing shopping center and more. Read more

Staff | Progressive Railroading

Construction has begun on three new stations that will be part of the New Haven-Hartford-Springfield commuter-rail program, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy and Connecticut Department of Transportation (ConnDOT) officials announced late last week.

Located in Wallingford, Meriden and Berlin, the stations are part of the new commuter-rail service that has been branded the Hartford Line. Construction on the three stations is scheduled to be completed by the time the service launches in late 2016, state officials said in a press release.

The stations will feature high-level platforms on both sides of the track; an overhead pedestrian bridge with new elevators and stair towers on both sides of the track to connect the two platforms; platform snow melt systems; electric vehicle charging stations; ticket vending machines; and passenger information display systems.

“The [New Haven-Hartford-Springfield] rail program will not only offer more frequent, convenient and faster passenger-rail service, but it will also cultivate significant benefits to communities along the rail line, including local economic and transit-oriented development activities at and around these stations,” said Malloy. Read more

David Volz | Hollywood Gazette

The City of Hollywood is hoping that the Tri-Rail Coastal Link will place one its stations in the City.

“We would like to be one of the first train stations for the Coastal Link and we believe Hollywood would be a good place to locate a train station,” said Raelin Storey, spokesperson for Hollywood.

This commuter train service would connect up the downtowns of coastal South Florida and Hollywood is one of the cities that is being considered for a train station to be located in Downtown Hollywood on 21st Avenue and Taylor Street.

“Hollywood is an ideal location for a stop because the rail corridor is immediately adjacent to our historic downtown. The land use is already in place for a regional activity center. This creates a very walkable, transit and pedestrian friendly stop. There is existing residential with 600 more units planned along with existing retail and office development all within a one fourth mile of this proposed stop,’ said Susan Goldberg, deputy director of the Hollywood Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA).

Also there is discussion underway for the expansion of the existing higher education facility, Barry University, which will further the area’s appeal for creating a true transit-oriented development. Read more

Todd Litman | Planetizen

A new report, Millennials in Motion: Changing Travel Habits of Young Americans and the Implications for Public Policy by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) and Frontier Group shows mounting evidence that the Millennial generation’s dramatic shift away from driving is more than temporary. While the 2000s saw a marked decrease in the average number of miles traveled by young Americans, the study explains that those trends appear likely to continue even as the economy improves—in light of the consistency of Millennials’ surveyed preferences, a continued reduction of Millennials driving to work, and the continued decreases in per-capita driving among all Americans.

“Millennials are different from their parents, and those differences aren’t going away,” said Phineas Baxandall, Senior Analyst at U.S. PIRG and co-author of the report. “After five years of economic growth with stagnant driving, it’s time for federal and state governments to wake up to growing evidence that Millennials don’t want to drive as much as their parents did. This change has big implications and policy makers shouldn’t be asleep at the wheel.”

It includes many findings that suggest that Millennials’ shift away from driving last decade is continuing:

• Census data shows that the share of 16 to 24 year-olds traveling to work by car declined by 1.5 percentage points between 2006 and 2013, while the share of young people getting to work by public transportation, on foot or by bicycle, or else working from home, had increased.
• Young people aged 20 to 30 are less likely to move from central cities to suburbs than at any time since at least the late 1990s.
• Millennials consistently report greater attraction to less driving-intensive lifestyles — urban living, residence in “walkable” communities, and openness to the use of non-driving modes of transport—than older generations.
• Fewer young people are getting their driver’s licenses than even a few years ago. The percentage of high school seniors with driver’s licenses declined from 85 percent to 73 percent between 1996 and 2010, according to the AAA Foundation for Highway Safety, with federal data suggesting that the decline has continued since then. Read more

Natalie Sherman | The Baltimore Sun

The Baltimore region has been less affected by federal spending cuts than other parts of the state, helping to make it a bright spot in an otherwise lackluster Maryland economy, a federal economist said Thursday.

Employment in the Baltimore region grew about 1.8 percent between September 2013 and September 2014, comparable to the 1.9 percent rate in the U.S. overall. In Maryland overall, jobs have grown at a rate of about 0.6 percent.

R. Andrew Bauer, a Baltimore-based senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Va., predicted that Baltimore will continue to outperform Maryland next year while the state experiences a “year of catch-up.”

“It’s not going to be an exciting time, but a steady time,” he said at the Hilton Baltimore, where the Greater Baltimore Committee hosted its economic outlook conference. “My version of optimistic is perhaps a revision of what optimistic is. … Growth is going to be more moderate.”

Maryland’s job growth started to slow in 2011, when Congress passed the Budget Control Act imposing spending caps and setting the stage for future automatic spending cuts, Bauer said. Those sequester cuts went into effect in 2013, placing another damper on growth. Read more