RAIL - Back On Track Forum

Quote from: timhI don't care about someone's ultra specific definition of what makes it a TOD or not. Yeah sure it would be nice to have less parking in the development that close to a station but we're dealing with BCC's mandatory parking minimums.

Well, I agree with member Jonno when he says we need to move the dial on mode share.

That's not really going to happen if these developments are full of car parking.

Huge parking also reduces affordability.

These TODs should have less parking. Or tell it like it is, and drop the TOD title.

Things need to do what they say on the label.

Dr. Chris Hale
https://theconversation.com/profiles/chris-hale-93655

QuoteDr Chris Hale is a transport strategist and urban economist who has published widely on transport infrastructure issues. His research interests include; transport project procurement and finance, station design, transport analysis, and urban infrastructure in Asian mega-cities.

Until June 2014 he was a lecturer in the Department of Infrastructure Engineering at The University of Melbourne.

Sure. Go after BCC's mandatory parking minimums then. The developer is literally just building what they are legally obligated to build. From what I understand developers aren't that keen on building them either, they add substantial construction cost and engineering difficulty (especially when deep basements are involved).

They should have minimal parking as should every suburb around public transport stations and commercial/employment centres + separated bike lanes in all roads!

BCC min parking requirements totally ignore public transports existence

Quote from: Jonno on December 18, 2023, 22:31:57 PMThey should have minimal parking as should every suburb around public transport stations and commercial/employment centres + separated bike lanes in all roads!

BCC min parking requirements totally ignore public transports existence

Correct, they're terrible. There's a couple of apartment blocks in Stones Corner that are currently awaiting approval. One has FOUR basement levels, another one has resorted to installing motorised car stackers in each car space to meet the requirements. Its ridiculous and it adds a phenomenal amount of cost to each building. That helps no-one as it adds cost for the developmer, which gets passed onto the buyer as a far more expensive apartment. The only people who benefit are property investors and I struggle to say anything nice about that subsection of the community

 In an area like stones corner as well which has a full busway station and is served by HF routes it's really not necessary.

Quote from: JonnoThey should have minimal parking as should every suburb around public transport stations and commercial/employment centres + separated bike lanes in all roads!

BCC min parking requirements totally ignore public transports existence

Agree on these points.

I know you and I sometimes disagree on technical grounds (read: math) but the math does agree with you...

- With building mode shares PT+AT < 50%, more car trips are generated than PT trips, which is a net increase in car.

- With building mode shares for PT+AT = 50% we are breaking even.

- With building mode shares for PT+AT > 50% we are gaining ground on car

A lot of external discussion focuses on mode share as some population-level, regional-level or city-wide level thing.

Not much seems to be out there about mode share at the building level.

But, a city-wide mode share is just an aggregation of lots of building-level mode shares across the city.

IMO that is the insight.

Hence, the need to reduce mandatory car parking minimums in these developments. Reduced car parking will also improve the acceptability of these developments, which are prone to NIMBY objections based on increased congestion and traffic generation.

Quote from: #Metro on December 18, 2023, 23:20:31 PMReduced car parking will also improve the acceptability of these developments, which are prone to NIMBY objections based on increased congestion and traffic generation.

Not necessarily true. I see comments all the time from NIMBY types whinging about too many cars parked on streets. A ridiculous complaint yes, but it's very very unpopular. NIMBYs will assume that if you don't provide parking, people who live there will just choose to park on the street, rather than take public transport. And truthfully if the public transport isn't good enough, that will partly come true. Hence why 15 minute all day frequency is an admirable goal

You can have a net increase in car trips but still have an increase in PT mode share.

Its a strawman to say the aim of TOD/TAD is to reduce the number of car trips in an absolute citywide sense. Thats impossible, and its misrepresenting the aims of the policy.

Saying a TOD is a failure because there was a net increase in car trips is like saying a fish is a failure on its ability to climb a tree.

The goal of the policy is to have less growth in traffic than the alternative scenario.

Say 1000 people move or migrate to SEQ.
There's no laws stopping people from moving here and no laws about how they travel.

Now, would you rather those 1000 people generate 3000 car trips a day, or 1500 car trips a day?

If you would prefer it to only be 1500, a great way to do that is to make sure housing near good public transport is available.

This is not some unproven theory.

Happy to be wrong.

One way to find out... do it in MS Excel. 

At TOD PT=50% there is a mode shift. From 0.2500, to 0.2549, an increase in favour of PT of +0.0049.

You have to remember, that in this scenario, all new residents are housed in TOD. Which we know is not currently true because places like Yarrabilba etc. exist.

You can see PT mode shares in the TOD buildings need to be very high to start moving the dial. This implies car parking restrictions, among other things.

It's an improvement, but we're going to need more than this to make significant moves in mode share towards PT and AT IMO.



Let me know if there are any arithmetic errors and I will attempt to update.

Ok, now for an experiment, run the spreadsheet again, but assume that all new population growth is directed to somewhere like Yarrabilba, so change the PT figure from 50% to something like 5.4% (Current average in Logan)
Could even go lower, like 3% since we know Yarrabilba style development does not have access to the 555, 140 and 150, nor convenient access to the Beenleigh line (Compared to established parts of Logan)

What effect does that have on citywide mode share?

^ Look in the table, this is already covered by the TOD PT = 0% mode share scenario. 

I can only recommend members try the test and check the approach with their ideas in Excel or find some other way to 'stress test' them.   

Have a go and see what happens...

^ This is a bit simplistic since it ignores the impact of just improving existing services.  The Runcorn site has no high frequency services convenient to it - the nearest appears to be the "Nursery Avenue" stops on the 150, which is about 800m (being generous) from the middle of the site.  Fruitgrove and Runcorn are not served by Gold Coast trains so only get a 30 minute service at best outside the peak flow direction on weekdays due to every second train terminating at Coopers Plains.

There's no real TOD (in the sense you are envisaging) anywhere between Coomera and Pimpama but Route 722 alone has gone from carrying 16,681 trips per annum in 2014/2015 (first full year of operation) to 186,940 in 2022/2023, which is an increase by a factor of over 11 and with only minor changes to the route.  The increases have come from population growth, growth in trip attractors (Westfield etc) and deliberate service improvements. That is also only one of the routes in the region albeit the busiest.

I'd have to sit down and sift through my data, but the Ormeau-Oxenford SA3 between FY16/17 and to FY21/22:
- Increased in estimated resident population from from 131,987 to 167,757; and
- Increased in residential density from 253.9/km2 to 322.7/km2.

That is the entire SA3, only a small part of which is accessible by Route 722, but it tends to suggest to me that simply offering a decent level of service is enough to get people interested to a point it is worthwhile.  We don't have to achieve perfection to get measurable improvements in performance.

I do agree we should get rid of parking minimums.  There really should be parking maximums - and where these do exist (eg the Ferny Grove project, which I had some involvement with although not in a planning sense), they are  way too generous.  Plenty of developers would be falling over themselves to not have to furnish every apartment with one or more car parks given the significant cost it adds to construction and to sale prices.

QuoteI can only recommend members try the test and check the approach with their ideas in Excel

Can you upload the spreadsheet to allow all members to experiment?

So we can see then at low mode shares for new development, say 0% or 3% it is sending citywide modeshare backwards.

At 25% you are treading water.

Therefore anything above 25% will having a positive, albeit small effect.
If you want to prove this, put 26% as the figure.

So we can definitely conclude that we shouldn't be doing any more Yarrabilba style development since other areas have to 'work harder' to offset the excess car travel they create.

At the same time, you can't expect miracles from TOD. It's a bit unfair to expect a small number of TOD residents doing the heavy lifting in terms of behavioral change up against the mass of the established city, its just one piece of the puzzle and policies need to be in place to lift mode share in existing areas.

The other thing of course is that proper TOD should also have the effect of dropping demand for all motorised transport because people should be walking and cycling to stuff nearby. 

With regards to the spreadsheet... it would be great if other members had a go at reproducing the sheet from the start, and see if they can arrive at the same results in MS Excel. It is a good learning exercise and will grow your confidence with the calcs.

#Metro's Five PT Equations:

1. Total Trips (The Pie) = Population x Av. TGR // Trips are a multiple of population.
2. PT Trips = The Pie x PT Mode share // PT trips are a slice of the total trip pie
3. Car Trips = Total Trips - PT Trips // Car trips are whatever is left over when you take out PT Trips (this can be extended to AT if you wanted to)
4. PT Mode Share = PT Trips / Total Trips // Mode share is the PT slice of the total trip pie
5. Peak = Peak % x PT Trips. //The peak is a further slicing of the PT slice (not used here)

The usual warnings apply regarding assumptions and modelling. Models by their nature and simplicity are necessarily imperfect.

Further research could be to look at the effect of introducing say 20 BUZ routes into Brisbane and seeing what relative or comparative effect that might have on mode share. As I often say, these are all tools. They all have a place and use, depending on the situation and context at hand.

Any chance you can you post the spreadsheet for members that don't want to recreate it from the start?

Quote from: Gazza on December 19, 2023, 19:06:34 PMAny chance you can you post the spreadsheet for members that don't want to recreate it from the start?

Or don't have the time...

I quit!!!!!      

https://x.com/jonathanpbryant/status/1744594357347647781?

Where's this?

More importantly - is it code or impact assessable? 

There's not much point complaining about BCC being more or less legally obliged to approve something.  The issue in that case isn't so much BCC's, but is more a failure of planning at State level (those guys are ultimately responsible for signing off on all the town planning schemes and as to what councils have a discretion about).

Quote from: Gazza on January 09, 2024, 16:17:20 PMWhere's this?

Morningside Railway Station

Quote from: SurfRail on January 09, 2024, 17:03:20 PMMore importantly - is it code or impact assessable? 

There's not much point complaining about BCC being more or less legally obliged to approve something.  The issue in that case isn't so much BCC's, but is more a failure of planning at State level (those guys are ultimately responsible for signing off on all the town planning schemes and as to what councils have a discretion about).

It is their City Plan they approve against! Fix the plan!

The Brisbane City Plan still has to be approved by the State, it can't be amended that easily or on an ad hoc basis.  Temporary local planning instruments can be used to protect buildings, put in place temporary arrangements for natural disasters or address a bunch of other things, but they can still be disallowed.

I don't work in planning law (just in areas tangential to and interacting with it), but without knowing if this is code assessable or not and what is permissible for the site, it's hard to make an assessment as to whether this is actually wrong in a legal or town planning sense.

Agree absolutely it is a stupid use of the land, but you can't blame people for doing what is legally permissible.

When the state reviews City Plans, are they getting down to the nitty gritty lot level like this though?
I guess the way I see it, BCC should be getting this right in the first place.

I would agree with Jonno that land adjacent to stations generally shouldn't be put to new low intensity commercial/industrial uses like storage, unless we're talking somewhere with no meaningful residential footprint up against it (eg Moorooka).  That is pretty basic stuff and I don't think it is reflected in a general sense in the City Plan. 

GCCC has things like the light rail overlay, but even that has carveouts - the bit of Main Beach between Tedder Ave and the GC Hwy is basically exempt and to remain lower density, and there isn't any uplift along the western bit of Queen Street even though there could and should be.