First principles assessment
Why use land use planning to encourage public transport use?
Short and long term effects on (public transport) demand
Short and long term effects on (public transport) supply
Financing requirements
Expected impacts on key policy objectives
Contribution to objectives
Expected impact on problems
Expected winners and losers
Barriers to implementation

Why use land use planning to encourage public transport use?

From the traveller's point-of-view, a journey starts with a point of origin and finishes with a point of destination. If there is a need for long walking distances at either end, lengthy waiting in exposed places, unpredictability of a seat, changing routes with the prospect of waiting and then losing one's seat, then even the most appealing form of public transport cannot compete with the car, unless passengers are captive (i.e. have no access to a car for the journey). From the public transport operator's point-of-view, the provision of public transport is costly and cannot be efficient unless there is guaranteed patronage. In low-density areas, a public transport-friendly service cannot be guaranteed, certainly not at off peak periods.

Public transport use may be encouraged through land use planning, by locating trip origins and destinations near public transport routes (or by providing efficient PT service to new developments) and ensuring trip densities are sufficiently intense to establish an efficient service.

Conversely, new or improved public transport routes and services should be linked with existing or planned concentrations of trip origins and destinations.

The separate topic of planning public transport routes is dealt with elsewhere, under the general heading of Public transport service levels and patterns. 

Demand impacts

Increasing development densities and altering the development mix to encourage public transport can have an effect on demand in three ways:

• Encouraging public transport use by improving conditions to enable public transport to operate more efficiently;
• Reducing walking and waiting times for public transport;
• Reducing the need for motorised travel (especially private motorised travel) by ensuring origins and destinations are closer together (dealt with separately under ‘Reducing the demand for personal motorised travel through land use planning').

It is the demand impact of the first of these which is the subject of the following table and the remainder of this section.

Responses and situations
Response	Reduction in road traffic	Expected in situations
		Change of departure time is not an effect of this instrument
		Change of route is not an effect of this instrument, except where the public transport route is different from that of the car trip it replaced
		Use of public transport will cause the ‘best’ destinations to in which undertake particular activities to be re-appraised, making shorter journeys possible.
		Better public transport accessibility will encourage shift to walk or cycle (destinations are now closer)and cause the number of car trips to be reduced.
		Change of mode to public transport is expected to occur (the main objective of the instrument) and cause the number of car trips to be reduced.
		Better public transport will make the ownership of a car (or a second car) less important. Also, where the instrument makes a greater range of destinations available within a short distance, a car may become less necessary.
		Encouraging moving house is not a specific objective of this instrument, but some may want to move house to new, public transport orientated developments

Short and long term demand responses

Though appropriate land use changes can potentially be a very effective way of promoting a modal shift to public transport, land use instruments are also the ones which take the longest to implement and thus to bear fruit. The greatest opportunities for change are in the circumstances of entirely new development, when land use densities and mixes may be specified in advance. Even in these conditions however, results will take years to materialise, as shown in the table. In the table, the time is taken to be from when the land use change is started, so generally there will be almost no response in the short term and very little in the medium term, as can be seen.

Demand responses
Response		1st year	2-4 years	5 years	10+ years
	No response
	No response
	Use facilities which are now closer
	Use public transport (or walk or cycle where destinations are now closer)
	To bus or rail, which are now more viable, so provide better service.
	Less need for a car
	No response

	= Weakest possible response,		= strongest possible positive response
	= Weakest possible negative response,		= strongest possible negative response

= No response

Level of response

The amount of mode shift to public transport in response to land use instruments will depend on:

• the scale of the land use changes;
• the design and type of the changes, in terms of density and mix;
• the speed with which the changes are effected; and
• the quality of public transport service available.

One study of travel patterns in a North American suburb found the elasticity of transit (public transport) travel with respect to land use density to be +0.10 to +0.51, depending on type of land use. This means that each 1.0% increase in density increases public transport use by 0.1 to 0.51% (VTPI, 2002).  This is illustrated in the tables below.

Typical Mode Share By Trip Purpose For Various Transport Systems (VTPI, 2013)

TOD Travel Impact Rating from 3 (very beneficial) to –3 (very harmful). A 0 indicates no impact or mixed impacts (VTPI, 2013).

Supply impacts

The direct and indirect supply implications of this instrument are as follows:

• Higher density and appropriately planned development should improve conditions for public transport and thus encourage greater public transport supply;
• There will not be an increase in the supply of road space from land use instruments per se; 
• If the land use policies are implemented on a regional scale, there could be a net reduction in the need for road space (compared with doing nothing) in line with the decrease in the amount of travel;
• Reduction in private motorised travel could encourage an increase in the supply of cycle and pedestrian facilities;
• Any increase in public transport use and reduction in car ownership would reduce the need for residential parking supply; 
• Increase in the use of public transport would reduce the need for non-residential parking supply.

Financing requirements

Though the costs of new development are considerable and land use solutions are, at their most extreme, the most expensive of the policy instruments contained in these pages, the cost usually falls in the main on the private sector (through investors, developers and occupiers). However, local authorities may have to bear some additional indirect costs (provision of extra traffic control, parking, public transport interchanges, etc).

Though it is difficult to cost this instrument, the range of possibilities being so large, some comments on cost can nevertheless be made.

Firstly, regarding individual developments, it has been estimated (Lucas, Marsh and Jones (2000), p.19) that if development conforms to a standard to reflect sustainable development, construction costs will rise typically between 5 per cent and 20 per cent. Unfortunately the proportion of this extra cost related solely to the planning needed for better public transport is not known but it is likely that there would be some additional cost.

The main way of financing the extra costs of achieving a transport-friendly development policy, particularly where the extra cost would normally fall on the local authority, is through developer contributions.

VTPI (2002) refers to work by Kockelman (1997), Lewis and Williams (1999), Diaz (1999) and Weinberger (2001), who indicate that public transport friendly land use planning can often increase property values in an area. As a result, such projects can often be funded through "value capture" strategies, in which the costs of improvements are paid through the additional tax revenue or a special local tax assessment in the affected area.

If development costs are looked at region-wide, an alternative picture on costs, in which costs are actually lower overall, may occur. This is illustrated in the following table (costs in Canadian dollars) (VTPI, 2002)

Estimated 25 Year Public Costs for Three Development Options 
(Blais, 1995)

The table shows substantial public savings for higher density land use patterns associated with transport-friendly development.

Expected impacts on key policy objectives

Increasing land uses densities and modifying development mix encourage people to use public transport and walking and cycling more and so to travel less by car, through the mechanisms explained earlier. The resulting increase in use of these modes at the expense of car travel can have significant effects on various objectives as shown in the table below. Once again, these impacts are approximate, as the scale of the effects depends largely on the scale of land use changes. 

	= Weakest possible positive contribution,		= strongest possible positive contribution
	= Weakest possible negative contribution		= strongest possible negative contribution

= No contribution

Expected impact on problems

The expected impacts of land use planning to increase public transport use are summarised in the following table.

	= Weakest possible positive contribution,		= strongest possible positive contribution
	= Weakest possible negative contribution		= strongest possible negative contribution

= No contribution

Expected winners and losers

It is difficult to see how there can be any losers if policies of land use density and mix are wisely applied. This is because there should be a wider range of destinations within a given distance and public transport operations are made easier. There is no discouragement per se to any motorised mode: the reduction in traffic by encouraging public transport will in fact benefit all motorised modes.

Winners and losers
Group	Winners/losers	Comment
Large scale freight and commercial traffic		Reduced congestion
Small businesses		Reduced congestion, better public transport access for employees and customers
High income car users		Reduced congestion
Low income car users with poor access to public transport		Public transport access will improve
All existing public transport users		Public transport access will improve
People living adjacent to the area targeted		Reduced congestion
Cyclists including children		Reduced car traffic, improved conditions for non-motorised users
People at higher risk of health problems exacerbated by poor air quality		Improved air quality
People making high value, important journeys		Bus access improved (and for car as congestion is reduced)
The average car user		Reduced congestion

	= weakest possible benefit,		= strongest benefit
	= weakest possible disbenefet,		= strongest possible disbenefit

= neither wins nor loses

Barriers to implementation

There are potentially severe barriers to implementation, particularly financial and related to feasibility. Legal barriers may also exist in cases where the current planning legislation would need amendment for this instrument to be implemented (e.g. if proposed development densities exceeded current standards).

Barriers to implementation
Barrier	Scale	Comment
Legal		But only if legislation is not already in place
Finance		Unless developers can be persuaded to pay in some way for "sustainability upgrade" of their developments
Governance		Divided responsibility between the transport authority and the planning authority can make this instrument difficult to implement
Political acceptability		Time needed to effect changes may make the instrument politically unattractive
Public and stakeholder acceptability		Public may oppose further densification.  Developers may be unwilling to act.
Technical feasibility		Not infeasible per se but amount of time needed may reduce feasibility.

= minimal barrier,

= most significant barrier