Version 5, changed by s3admin. 08/22/2006. Show version history
This paper seems to reference transit demand management programs which encourage commuters to either use carpools or public transit. There is a whole collection of strategies for this - please see the Victoria Transport Policy Institute Encyclopedia at http://www.vtpi.org/tdm/index.php#strategies for a complete list.
You might consider just referring people to their web site instead of trying to re-invent the wheel, since they do such a wonderful job.
Just a few comments on specific paragraphs:
Use Vehicles more efficiently - can't see the referenced diagram from this page.
Raise the price of travel
Indiscriminately raising the price of all modes of travel lowers everyone's quality of life. I cannot help but be very resistant to any movement toward penalizing those who have less money than others. We see this everywhere these days - if you don't earn 6 figures, then it isn't enough that you have trouble paying the rent, you can't even get to a decent job because transportation costs so much. Think of the minimum-wage night-worker who has to drive to their job when transit is not running - these are cleaners, food-service workers, lower-paid health-care aids. It is absolutely immoral to put any kind of tax on these workers when they have no alternative to driving.
It IS effective to raise the cost of SOME aspects of transportation in order to encourage other modes, but they MUST go hand in hand. For example, make parking very expensive AND give free bus passes to everyone who works at a particular place, or goes to school at a particular school. There are Eco-pass programs which accomplish this and have been shown to be extremely effective in reducing VMT while allowing the students or employees to actually reduce the money they spend on transportation. There is the added benefit of the school or employer not having to spend money and give precious space to yet more parking.
Population density Well, it isn't so much dense population as consolidated mixed use development. I would remove the word "population" from both of these paragraphs since it's very distracting; . The terms "residential density" and "transit density" are closer to what you're trying to convey, I think.
Housing at rail stations
Well, this goes with the paragraph above - it's really about a nodal form of development as described by Andres Duany (anything on http://www.dpz.com/transect.htm ) and the Congress for the New Urbanism folks (http://www.cnu.org/aboutcnu/index.cfm?formAction=charter ).
I'll bet you're not going to live at a rail station; neither am I. But I would live 2 blocks away. As we come up with these ideas for accomplishing higher-density centers with fixed-route transit, we have to keep an eye on quality of life. At the rail station itself - offices, retail, connections to other forms of transit. One block away on the side facing away from the station - residences above commercial (when I say commercial, I'm including civic, educational, etc. - any public street-level enterprise). Please look at the DPZ.com site for a thorough explanation of the idea of zones (not zoning!) for development.
I don't believe this statement is true: "When workplaces dominate the station area, many of the workers are from suburban areas. They depend on cars at home, and therefore have a tendency to drive to work, even if it is near a rail station." I would want to see some studies on this. If there is a park-and-ride station near the suburban residence, and there is little or no parking at the destination station (or it is very expensive) then your workers are going to take the train. Look at SF - who drives downtown? Virtually no one, even though they live in the 'burbs. It's way too expensive and driving in the city is becoming a nightmare.
Correcting transportation finance structures Again, the VTPI people have wonderful descriptions of all of these, except the ones that don't work or make sense, like taxing per parking space. I'm currently working on a toolkit for my employer that will guide municipalities in creating these programs - unbundled parking, maximum parking requirements, parking benefit districts, parking cash-outs, required car-sharing.
Again, I will always be opposed to any system which penalizes the poor by indiscriminately burdening any driver with additional out-of-pocket costs when they have no alternative but to drive. If we focus on the parking end of it, I think we handle most of those cases, and avoid the horrendous cost of trying to put in place fancy and ridiculously complex computer systems to monitor these activities. (I've been in software development for 20 years, so I am very aware of the effort and money that go into these things - it always seems clear at the beginning, and quickly becomes a rococo mess). And then there is the Big Brother aspect - I don't believe most itizens want their movements tracked. Just say NO to by-the-mile cost systems.
The rest of the paragraphs seem sensible. Here's some hope on the public transit side - have you seen the new smaller buses on AC Transit's web site? (http://www.actransit.org/news/articledetail.wu?articleid=9aa6076a ) 30-feet, hybrid, quiet, clean-burning, tight turning radii for driving in smaller streets. We're finally getting there!