March 7th, 2008 · No Comments

That means not just passively following population as it spills out into the exurbs, trying to accommodate the overflow from highways. It means creating nodes of density around rail stations where people can live and shop and even work.

Like Plano, Texas, on DART’s light rail. Once a busy stop on the extensive Texas Electric system, by 2002 when DART’s rails arrived, downtown Plano was a place of vacant stores and empty streets. But now rows of new apartments look out over the tracks. Folks can walk out their door and climb aboard a trolley for jobs in the telecom corridor down the line, or for shopping, dining and a movie at Mockingbird Station, or ride all the way to downtown Dallas — 22 miles away.

This is the way it’s supposed to work. Urban rail doesn’t follow its customers; the customers follow urban rail.

Photo: Sacramento RTD

Sacramento has been laying light rail right over the abandoned right-of-way of the old Sacramento Northern electric system and along little-used railroad branch lines since 1987. As the rails are bolted down — 37.4 miles so far — land once occupied by factories and warehouses is filling with high-density residential and retail development. As the system spreads, nodes develop where light rail, long-distance rail and buses meet and exchange passengers.

“We’re in the very early stages,” says urban planner Mike Wiley, acting general manager and CEO of the five-city Regional Transit District. Today riders make 93,000 trips a day on RT. But the Sacramento Area Council of Government’s Preferred Scenario Blueprint looks far into the future, to 2050, when it is expected riders will be making 629,000 trips a day on an integrated regional transit system.

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