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King County Metro Transit’s RapidRide brings opportunities to coordinate with land development and build community.
Over half of all trips on public transportation in the United States are by bus. Across the country, communities are innovating new ways to deploy transit technologies and endeavoring to leverage existing systems for new development. They are looking anew at bus service; experimenting with bus rapid transit (BRT), circulators, and buses in congestion-free toll lanes; and upgrading the user experience via information technology.
For ULI’s first Innovations in Transit and Land Use project, ULI Infrastructure Initiative and ULI Seattle (now part of ULI Northwest) partnered with local governments to examine land use, economic development, and affordable housing along King County Metro Transit’s RapidRide corridors. Through educational programs, expert site analysis, and implementation workshops, ULI and project partners produced a set of recommendations and released a report, Developing the Next Frontier: Capitalizing on Bus Rapid Transit to Build Community.
ULI Infrastructure Initiative continues to examine new innovations in transit service and their potential for improved coordination with land development according to the following program goals:
- Empower communities to strengthen the connection between transit networks, including bus networks, and land development.
- Develop best practices around BRT-oriented development.
- Identify and investigate emerging issues in transit and land use.
As part of this effort, ULI Infrastructure Initiative has created the Innovations in Transit and Land Use Toolkit for Impact that summarizes the ULI Northwest bus rapid transit and land use initiative and explains how participating communities can develop a deeper understanding of the land use potential of their transit investments. For more information, contact Rachel MacCleery, vice president for infrastructure, at [email protected].