Editor's Note: Vicki Cannard, who took part in last year's transit study mission to
Scandinavia, has taken a close look at how our colleagues in northern Europe provide
exemplary access, mobility, and services to city dwellers.
By Vicki Cannard
Capital and Long Range Planning Manager
Pierce Transit
Tacoma, Wash.
Those of us in the U.S. transit industry sometimes envy our European counterparts.
"Well, of course, transit is a way of life there," we say. "They don't have
to struggle for acceptance. People are used to taking transit."
True enough, perhaps, but this reflexive response doesn't fully explain why transit is
so successful in Europe, as I discovered last year when I traveled to Scandinavia as a
member of the 1997 Spring Mission: Public/Private Partnerships and Innovative Transit
Technologies in Finland and Scandinavia, and the UITP Conference in Stuttgart, Germany.
Our group met with colleagues and inspected transit facilities in Helsinki, Stockholm,
Gothenburg, and Copenhagen. I learned that while transit is definitely well established in
Scandinavia, it's not just because of tradition, scarcity of land, or high fuel costs.
It's the result of deliberate policy decisions that have made transit more efficient and
attractive to consumers.
First, let's dispel the notion that Europeans automatically choose transit because of
the high costs of automobile ownership or an innate acceptance of the environmental and
economic benefits of transit. European countries are dealing with some of the same
challenges we are:
a dramatic increase in auto ownership despite higher vehicle costs and fuel prices three
to four times higher than in the United States;
continued moves of people and jobs to the suburbs; and
transit facilities that have reached the end of their useful life, requiring capital
replacement.
Fifteen years ago, transit ridership was dropping throughout Scandinavia. Today, these
same countries enjoy robust transit ridership and farebox recovery rates of 50 percent to
80 percent.
What accounts for the turnaround? These countries implemented an overall strategy of
operating well-coordinated regional, urban, and suburban services, undergirded by
stringent pre-existing land controls.
Components of the Scandinavian strategy include:
investing in attractive vehicles and facilities to inspire commuters to choose public
transport;
contracting out services to public and private contractors to realize efficiencies while
retaining strict service quality standards and fare policy authority;
adopting technical innovations such as transit priority at traffic signals and Automatic
Vehicle Location systems; and
funding intensive marketing/public information efforts.
As capital and long range planning manager for Pierce Transit, I am most interested in
how best to design facilities to support increased transit usage and operational
efficiency. I am responsible for developing transit facilities throughout our diverse
service area, which includes 450 square miles of urbanized, suburban, and rural Pierce
County south of Seattle. I am also involved in developing joint facilities with Sound
Transit, the newly formed regional transit authority for the Puget Sound area.
Last fall, we completed Phase I of the Tacoma Dome Station, a six-level, 1,200-space
parking garage supporting Pierce Transit's high-volume Seattle Express bus service. This
project is actually the first phase of a larger effort to build a major transportation hub
for the Puget Sound region.
The region recently embarked on the design and construction of a 10-year regional
transit system that envisions the Tacoma Dome Station as a premier regional multimodal
facility, supporting express bus, local bus, light rail, and commuter rail services, and
private carriers such as airport shuttles and intercity bus lines.
The Scandinavian Experience
As we design this facility in cooperation with our partners Sound Transit and the city
of Tacoma, our goals are to provide seamless connections between modes, to encourage
private development, and to help revitalize an older industrial area of the city. That may
sound like a tall order, but some Scandinavian cities have already achieved similar goals.
One outstanding example is the World Trade Center in Stockholm, a beautiful building
that brings together intercity, urban, and suburban bus and rail routes, and also houses
private and public office space and retail outlets. Thousands of commuters stream through
there each day. Unlike the Tacoma Dome Station, no parking is provided.
The key to making this and other similar facilities work is full service integration:
coordinated urban, suburban, and regional rail and bus routes; circulator systems that
reach beyond the immediate vicinity of stations; and connections to other modes, such as
ferries or community bike programs.
To further wean suburbanites from their cars, Scandinavian systems have added service
to suburban areas, concentrated high-density residential development near suburban transit
centers, and capitalized on new technology. In Gothenburg, Sweden, for example, signal
priority systems for transit were installed at 1,000 suburban intersections.
The Scandinavian experience shows that capital investments in transit don't always have
to be pricey to yield desired results. New capital facilities in Scandinavia are often
lower-cost, even minimal facilities compared to some U.S. standards. At the same time,
these countries make excellent use of historic transit stations, thus preserving their
transit heritage and enhancing their cities' livability.
Similarly, in designing Phase II of the Tacoma Dome Station, one of the possibilities
we're considering is siting the new commuter rail terminal in a historic warehouse that
recently was renovated as a retail center.
Scandinavia also teaches us that the success of transit hinges on sound public policy.
Stringent land use controls were in place throughout Scandinavia in advance of transit
improvements. Environmental activists serve on transit boards; they are not regarded as
extremists on the fringe of society.
Puget Sound communities are grappling with similar issues. In this red-hot economy,
we're simply running out of space to develop. The state's Growth Management Act,
reinforced by the region's Vision 2020 land use and transportation plan, calls for
concentrating growth in developed areas and preserving rural areas. Some jurisdictions
have incorporated this policy in their comprehensive plans. Others, such as the city of
Tacoma, have gone even farther and adopted transit-supportive design standards.
Like our Scandinavian counterparts, we are establishing the land use/transportation
connection by ordinance. This is the foundation for ensuring that our transit investments
succeed in attracting more riders and garnering broad public support for continued funding
of transit services.
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