tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post3912676075415855387..comments2024-02-01T04:37:41.878-05:00Comments on Cap'n Transit Rides Again: Which should we fight harder, job sprawl or housing sprawl?Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-58278685330467581852015-11-28T09:44:05.163-05:002015-11-28T09:44:05.163-05:00Zoning may be part of it, but I think another gove...Zoning may be part of it, but I think another government intervention is the one that creates cheap land with little congestion and upper-middle class suburbs at the periphery - the building and upkeep of an abundant number roads and freeways.NickDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07006815196885883516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-49026076076451185332015-11-27T12:54:32.983-05:002015-11-27T12:54:32.983-05:00I should point out that job sprawl is crazy. From...I should point out that job sprawl is crazy. From the point of view of the businesses.<br /><br />There are documented advantages for commercial businesses to *clustering*. It's one of the best-documented economic phenomena and dates back thousands and thousands of years. Sprawling, for a commercial business, is equivalent to "reducing your revenues". If you're a shoe store, you want to be next to other shoe stores, so that a customer frustrated with one shoe store will try you out. Same with a restaurant, same with any other business.<br /><br />Industrial back-end businesses -- with strictly wholesale sales, no retail -- have less incentive to cluster but there are still documented advantages to it. Being able to walk across the street to your suppliers and customers is very valuable.<br /><br />So job sprawl is crazy. There must be some very strong government intervention which is causing job sprawl. And I think it's zoning, which prohibits opening new commercial and industrial businesses next to the existing ones. Because "that side of the street is zoned residential!"neroden@gmailhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07475686367097445497noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-85520304401748764112015-10-15T14:04:07.388-04:002015-10-15T14:04:07.388-04:00If you just have residential sprawl, which is what...If you just have residential sprawl, which is what most American cities were like in the streetcar days, then it still works *OK* because pretty much everyone is going to and from downtown for work, shopping, and play. Thus a radial transit network serves that travel demand, though with the caveat that there's a lot of peak loading issues. I suppose it's theoretically possible that you could have a downtown residential nexus with all the jobs sprawled out, and while I think it would technically work from a transit perspective, it would be less viable because businesses couldn't cluster nor could you achieve the "one stop shopping" aspect of downtown. <br /><br />I think in general the biggest issue is double-sprawl (residential and job together). In this case, everyone lives everywhere and works everywhere, so there's never enough overlapping of trips between any two destination points for transit to work. That is unless the city is so densely populated that sheer numbers allow the development of a fully gridded transit system like you see in Paris, London, or Tokyo. Jeffrey Jakucykhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04092631645389171565noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-2911127640412046322015-10-10T23:32:35.944-04:002015-10-10T23:32:35.944-04:00Only about 25% of Toronto area residents commute t...Only about 25% of Toronto area residents commute to downtown Toronto by car, and the percentage is similar whether they live in the inner suburbs or outer suburbs. Only for downtown-downtown commutes is the number significantly lower... no surprise there considering the short distances.<br /><br />I don't have access to the exact data, but based on the information that was available to me, I deduced that about 46% of downtown residents who work outside downtown commute to work by car. <br />http://swontariourbanist.blogspot.ca/2015/06/where-do-cars-in-toronto-come-from-part_29.html<br />That suggests that it's more important for jobs to be located near transit than for housing. Although maybe it's more about how well the jobs are served by transit relative to how well they are served by cars.NickDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07006815196885883516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-7823739806503178242015-10-10T11:29:32.803-04:002015-10-10T11:29:32.803-04:00I wonder if this discussion misses an important co...I wonder if this discussion misses an important confounding factor. Most practicing economic-development professionals know that one of the best predictors of corporate location is minimization of the CEO's driving time. It may be that once housing is sprawled, work sprawl is inevitable. Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16681128698539770984noreply@blogger.com