Want to cut vehicle travel? Bring jobs and housing together

With some exceptions, such as Peter Calthorpe’s work, new urbanists have focused more of their attention on integrating retail into residential areas than on creating what policy specialists call a “jobs/housing balance.” A new study by Robert Cervero and Michael Duncan suggests that the jobs/housing balance is in fact the more important of these goals — if what’s desired is a reduction in vehicular travel. In the Autumn 2006 Journal of the American Planning Association, Cervero, a transportation planning specialist at UC-Berkeley, and Duncan, a doctoral candidate in Berkeley’s planning program, say both goals are worthwhile. Previous research “found that locating retail stores and services near residences can ‘de-generate’ vehicular trips for shopping by upwards of 25 percent,” the authors write. The new analysis by Cervero and Duncan says that if twice as much retail and service activity is placed within four miles of people’s residences, there will be a 13.7 percent decline in the time spent getting to and from shops and consumer services. That’s a step in the right direction, so to speak, but it doesn’t accomplish as much as bringing a large number of jobs near people’s homes. The authors say that “access to jobs reduces personal time spent in travel by vehicle nearly 88 percent more than access to shopping and services.” Easier access to jobs reduces vehicle miles of travel 72.5 percent more than does access to shopping and services. One community that has acted to create a better balance of housing and employment is Palo Alto, California. The authors report that Palo Alto “has rezoned land from commercial to residential uses and set affordability mandates for new housing in an effort to contain local traffic.” They also note that the Bay Area’s nine-county Metropolitan Transportation Commission, “which controls the region’s transportation purse strings, has thrown its weight behind a balanced growth, pro-transit scenario. The agency recently approved a bold but controversial policy that new transit projects will not be funded until cities plan and zone for a minimum number of homes around rail stops.”