Land Development and Transportation Policies for Transit-Oriented Development in Germany and Italy: Five Case Studies

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Summary: Across the UnitedStates, metropolitan regions areincreasingly turning to transit-oriented development (TOD) as alogical alternative to the auto-dependent land developmentpatterns of the last six decades.TOD projects, however, facepolicy hurdles that could inhibit

their effectiveness, particularly those that address land usedensities, parking, and the roleof traf c impact studies.

In this policy brief, Bay Area transportation plannerMichelle DeRobertis undertakesa comparative examination of recent TOD developments in veEuropean cities and nds thatby planning land-use and transitconcurrently, planners in Europehave created successful, vibrantnew communities from which

their American peers can learn.

Comparative Domestic Policy ProgramPolicy Brie

Introduction

American transportation practitioners andpolicymakers are o ten stymied by how andwhere to enter the ollowing causality loop:Mass transit 2 can help reduce tra c congestion.However, mass transit is only tenable with highridership. High ridership is achieved throughdenser land use. Yet, unless mass transit serviceis already in place, density o ten leads to in-creased tra c congestion.

Be ore World War II, most American cities hadwell-developed transit systems. The transition

rom transit-based to auto-based urbanizedareas was slow but steady. For many reasons,including increased a fuence, cheap gasoline,and the development o the Interstate Highway System,3 transportation planning gradually be-came roadway planning, and transit planningbecame an a terthought. This was especially true in the western region o the United States,and in particular Cali ornia, where it seemedthere was an in nite supply o land. Auto-dependency became the norm, and by the1960s whole communities were built withoutany transit, since roads and reeways could be

orever widened. Consequently, transit service,ubiquitous be ore 1940, su ered. Althoughtoward the end o the 20th century transitservice improved in many parts o the country,

roadway capacity remained the main ocus

o transportation analyses and investments inmost metropolitan areas.

Consensus has nally been reached that road-ways can no longer be widened ad infnitem .Tra c congestion was not eliminated evenwith 12-lane reeways, 6- to 8-lane arterials anddouble le t-turn lanes. Transit’s role in reduc-ing congestion and providing mobility is nowrecognized. Yet transit cannot increase ridershipwithout signi cant geographic expansionand improved service levels. However, transitagencies cannot justi y expansion unless itwould pay o with more riders. How can weget around this chicken-and-egg conundrum?Transportation planners and transit advocateshave realized that the missing element is landuse. Ridership will inevitably increase whendensity is created near mass transit stations.Likewise, denser developments bene t throughgreater access or customers and increasedcommuting options or tenants. This symbiosisis transit-oriented development (TOD).

TOD brings us to a new location in the causal-ity loop: mass transit needs denser land use,but denser land use can overload the immedi-ate area with tra c, especially when it is builtwithout transit in rastructure. Furthermore, theNational Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) 4

Land Development and Transportation Policies forTransit-Oriented Development in Germany and Italy:Five Case Studies

by Michelle DeRobertis 1

1744 R Street NWWashington, DC 20009T 1 202 683 2650F 1 202 265 1662E in o@gm us.org

June 7, 2010

1 Michelle DeRobertis is a senior transportation planner at Valley Transportation Authority in San Jose, CA. The views expressed hereare those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF).2 Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), Light Rail (LRT), subways, and commuter rail are collectively referred to here as “mass transit”, to differen-

tiate them from local bus service.3 Established in 1944, funded in 1952 and expanded in 1956, the Interstate Highway System was completed after 35 years andcost $114 billion, equivalent to $425 billion in 2006 dollars.



Comparative Domestic Policy Program

Policy Brie requires a tra ic impact study or most developments. I road widening

is not an option, developers are sometimes asked to reduce the size o aproject (which o course reduces its density) to mitigate the “tra ic impacts.”In addition, local parking ordinances o ten require parking to be built at thesame car-centric ratios regardless o proximity to transit.

Over the past 15 years, Cali ornia has seen an increasing trend o high-den-sity, mixed-use projects, near and ar rom transit stations, both with andwithout bicycle and pedestrian in rastructure. Generally, the same standards

or parking and tra ic “impacts” were applied to TOD areas. During my ellowship, I looked at how European planners made crucial decisions

regarding land use density, parking, and tra ic studies in the planning andapproval o land-development projects. I studied projects in ive Italian

and German cities to identi y lessons or American policies and practices inTOD.

I studied projects in Turin, Milan; Genoa, Italy; and in Stuttgart and Ham-burg, Germany. 5 All case studies were located within city limits at a masstransit station: commuter rail in Hamburg and Genoa; light rail / tram sta-tions in Stuttgart, Turin, and Milan; and a metro station in Milan and Turin.All were built (or had components built) since 2000 and are currently oc-cupied, with the exception o the Milan project that is under construction.

Turin, home to Fiat, and Stuttgart, home to Mercedes–Benz and Porsche,are relatively auto-dependent as re lected in their auto-ownership ratesshown in Figure 1. Genoa and Hamburg are major seaports with many port-related industries. The i th city, Milan, also has a large industrial base.In general, none o the cities are known or being particularly innovativeor aggressive in discouraging car use. There ore, their policies may be moretrans erable to car-centric American cities than those o other Europeancities.

Lessons Learned from Italy and Germany

For each case study, I interviewed city planners, architects, and engi-neers about the process or determining land use mix and densities,as well as parking and tra c study requirements. I identi ed many lessons or American practitioners. The lessons below re erencetheir applicability primarily to San Francisco Bay Area projects, butcan potentially be applied to other metro areas as well.

1. Mass transit is essential to a livable city.

My research o TOD projects was not speci cally about transitservice, yet the transit setting in Italy and Germany cannot be

ignored. All ve case studies had at least two orms o mass tran-sit6 with excellent coverage throughout the entire urban area. Thecommitment to provide and und both mass transit and local busservice was so ingrained that it is considered one o the essentialcomponents o a livable city, along with clean water, sanitation, andgarbage collection. In short, requent, a ordable, and ast masstransit enables hundreds o thousands to live in dense urban areas;it is accepted that the government will provide (or contract or)transit service.

2. Density and mass transit must be planned in concert.

Mass transit needs density, and density (and society) bene ts rommass transit. Allowing high densities where there is no mass transitis as shortsighted as allowing low densities at mass transit stations.Long-range transit planning is essential. This can be as visionary and pro-active as Hamburg constructing ve commuter rail linesin the 1920s and preserving adjacent land or uture in ll develop-ment, or late 20th century catch-up projects such as Turin openingits metro line in 2006.

Furthermore mass transit must be an integral part o every develop-ment project. In all my case studies, the underlying assumption wasthat i a large project was being developed, then the train, metro, ortram would be extended to serve it. However, this will only work i there is a train, metro, or tram to extend.

In Santa Clara County, Cali ornia, the proposed Coyote Valley project in south San Jose is located along the Caltrain commuter railline; a new station is planned to serve the site. In Oakland, how-ever, the largest redevelopment opportunity is the ormer OaklandArmy base; the only mass transit line (BART) is over one mile away.

4 In California, the pertinent regulation is the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)5 Italy and Germany are similar in size and structure: Italy (pop. 60 million) has 20 states called“regione;” Germany (pop. 82 million) has 16 states called “bundesländer”.

6 This is in addition to regional train service provided by the state and interurban rail serviceprovided by the national railway.

Figure 1. Vehicle Ownership Comparison (2005/2003*)

Stuttgart Torino Genova Milano USA*0

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900Cars Motorcycles

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Although the redevelopment o this land is only in the planning

stages, there is not currently a plan to extend BART service to thissite. Since the base redevelopment project is on hold, it is hard tocriticize the lack o planning or BART. But when the project isrevived, the city o Oakland should ensure that it has mass transit sothat the mistakes o the past ty years are avoided.

3. Density Should Not Be Feared or Avoided

In both Italy and Germany, the density and land use o a newdevelopment are determined by assessing the surrounding area. Theproposed land-use mix then undergoes a public process to deter-mine what land uses/services are missing rom the neighborhood.

While cities are expected to have more multistory buildings than thesuburbs, density is not uni orm throughout the city; it varies basedon actors such as topography and transportation in rastructure.The two cities that chose more dense development, Stuttgart andMilan, based decisions on proximity to major transit stations. Turinand Hamburg justi ed the same densities or the same reason.Genoa made the decision that the site should be less dense due tothe neighborhood’s lack o open space. (However it must be notedthat this “less dense” development was the equivalent o 63 dwellingunits (d.u.) per acre; or comparison, San Jose’s highest residentialdensity zoning is 20-50 d.u./acre.)

The most signi cant infuence on density was proximity to transit.It is accepted practice in both Italy and Germany that denser devel-opments must be closer to mass transit. Surprisingly, this key TODpractice was not o cially adopted policy.

4. Parking Requirements cannot be “One Size Fits All”

Parking supply regulation is one area where U.S. policies appearmore e ective than in Italy or Germany. German and Italian cit-ies must comply with nationally mandated, overly high parkingrequirements. Typically in the United States, each city has the fex-ibility to set parking requirements or new development. However,local control does not always result in e ective parking policies; eachcity must independently recognize the impacts o overly strict park-ing standards and change its ordinances. For instance, Italian andGerman cities are required to provide bicycle parking, in contrastto the city-by-city ordinances in the United States that o ten ail toaddress this need.

In sum, context is important: one size does not t all cities or allneighborhoods. Both Turin and Milan have realized that nationalparking standards are too high or land uses next to mass transit.

The state o Baden-Württemburg, where Stuttgart is located, has

adopted, and the city o Milan is about to adopt, lower parkingratios or o ce and retail developments located near mass transit.The developer unds that would have built parking are now used orother city services; the developer doesn’t bene t rom building lessparking - the public does.

5. Developer fees for transportation impacts should be based ona set formula applied equally across the metropolitan area ratherthan on a case-by-case basis.

Italy and Germany have standard development ees or publicworks projects, and Italy also has ees to improve the public space

(in addition to land donation). In Cali ornia, tra c impact ees areo ten determined through project-speci c tra c studies, a methodwhich bene ts those projects developed rst, when roadways couldstill absorb the tra c. It also encourages suburban sprawl. Thus,many Cali ornia communities have implemented or are consideringtra c impact development ees or ways to allocate costs propor-tionately to und uture transportation improvements. However,improvement projects are typically roadway projects; impact eesto und transit capital or operating costs are rare. Improvementsare almost always con ned to one city, and regional cooperation isextremely di cult. Finally, travel orecasting models used to predict

uture tra c volumes and uture roadway needs are calibrated onhistorical trip-making patterns, which are the result o auto-depen-dent land use.

Standard ees citywide would be more equitable than project-by-project, but region-wide ees, which would keep developers romplaying one city against another to obtain the lowest ees, would beeven better.

Case Study: Turin

The major transportation project in Turin or the past decade hasbeen Spina Centrale (the Central Spine), a 12 km corridor thatcontains the new metro, and includes undergrounding the railwaysthat provide commuter, regional, and intercity train service. It alsoincludes a complete redesign o Corso Inghilterra, the ormer indus-trial rontage road to the railroad tracks. This project has made 2million m 2 (500 acres) o land available or redevelopment. The city divided this large corridor into our project areas called Spina 1, 2,3, and 4. This case study ocuses on the site within Spina 2 called“Spina 2-PRIN,” directly served by two tram lines and 300 me-ters away rom the existing Porta Susa train/metro station.

3


Policy Brie






Policy Brie shops, and o ces, were determined through public meetings and

negotiations between the city and developers.

The three residential buildings each have 500 d.u. and total 148,000m2 o foor area on 36 acres, equivalent to 41 d.u./acre. 55% o this land area (19 acres) will be donated to the public, creating a netdensity o 85 d.u./acre.

Parking: City Li e was approved using national parking ormulae orresidential parking and the Lombardia region ormulae or publicparking. Parking or o ce alone requires one m2 o parking per onem2 gross foor area. In total, about 4,000 public parking spaces wererequired. Coincidentally, a new metro line had been sited near the

project. City planners realigned the metro and sited a new stationunderneath City Li e, and then re-analyzed the project’s tra c andparking generation, concluding that parking could be drastically reduced to 1,000 spaces. The unds that the developer would other-wise have spent on parking will be paid to the city or other publicservices.

Tra c Studies: Tra c studies or City Li e concluded there wouldbe signi cant congestion on one o the main access roads andrecommended that it be undergrounded directly into the project’sparking garage. Milan planned to use the €60 million in develop-ment ees to und this tunnel, but the community and neighborsobjected since these ees are intended to bene t the entire neigh-borhood, and they deemed the underpass would only “bene t” theproject’s tenants and customers. Thus, it will not be built at this timebecause it lacks unding. Currently, metro and other public trans-portation provide alternatives to driving.

Genoa

In Genoa, the Fiumara site previously housed several actories nearthe coast and port. In 1989, the city adopted a new general plan orthe redevelopment o this and other sites to refect the changing econ-omy. Fiumara is not served by the 5.5 km metro, but is directly servedby a train service called “linea metropolitana.” It runs several times anhour and is equivalent to commuter rail. By walking to the end o theplat orm, one can take stairs directly into the Fiumara campus.

Density: Genoa worked with the neighborhoods to select land usesthat were under-represented, particularly public recreation. Fiumarahas a movie theatre complex and a multi-sport tness center inaddition to the typical housing, retail, and o ce buildings. Genoa’ssteep terrain concentrates the urbanized area on 64 o the city’s 240km2. Thus, Genoa is one o the densest cities in Italy (and the dens-est case study, as shown in Figure 2); signi cant open space wasthere ore considered essential.

To maximize open space, city planners concentrated housing inthree 19-story towers; built ew roads within Fiumara, netting moreland or green space and less or pavement and roadways; and likeMilan’s City Li e, designed roadways to go directly into the parkinggarage.

9 The fairgrounds were relocated beyond the terminus of an existing metro line which wasextended to serve the new site; Europe’s Expo 2010 will take place there.

Figure 2. Population Density

Torino Milano Genova Stuttgart Hamburg San Francisco San Jose Oaklan0

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Aiming or less density compared to the surrounding neighborhood,

Genoa’s zoning plan was amended to allow 0.7 FAR. The resulting270 d.u. on 9.2 acres is 29 d.u./acre. Adjusted or the land donationto the public, the net density is 63 d.u./acre.

Parking: Parking in Genoa has always been at a premium, and asredevelopment has been so rare, very little o the city’s land use meetsthe national standards or “existing,” let alone expansion, sites. Noattempts were made to reduce parking, as in Milan, or delay buildingit, as in Turin, since in Genoa very little street and o -street publicparking exists, compared to other cities. 10 Genoa required all publicparking or Fiumara be concentrated in one ve-story parkinggarage. Residential and o ce private parking is located underneath

each building.

Stuttgart

Stuttgart’s Möhringen Station was historically a reight station andrail yard. As the city built its tram lines, the station became impor-tant in linking the ormer village o Möhringen to the city center.Eventually the rail yard became de unct, and in 1995 Stuttgart beganto plan or its redevelopment.

Density: Since Stuttgart’s latest general plan was rom 1990, anamendment was needed or the Möhringen station area. Plan-ners considered its location at a light rail station, and the servicesrequired, including a supermarket, a kindergarten, senior residences,and student housing. Stuttgart selected densities consistent with oth-er city areas with these same characteristics, even though Möhringenwas much denser than the adjacent neighborhood. Furthermore inthe zoning amendment, the city rezoned the abutting low density housing to this same higher density.

Land use density in Germany is set by two parameters: the FAR,

and the maximum building ootprint ratio (GRZ in German). TheMöhringen apartments’ ootprint was set at 60% maximum and theFAR was 1.8. For the main residential buildings, the land use mixwas required to be 80% residential and 20% retail/o ce. The veresidential buildings have our stories with 36 d.u. each and groundfoor o ce/retail. This calculates to 42 d.u./acre.

Parking: Parking standards in Germany are set by the ederalbundesland, or state government, in this case the state o Baden-Württemburg mandates 0.8 space per unit o multi amily housing,and no public parking is required. For nonresidential uses, the or-mula gets quite complicated depending on the speci c type o retail

permitted. This supply is then divided into public versus private.Stuttgart sets additional parking conditions on a project-by-projectbasis. In the case o Möhringen’s residential buildings, virtually allparking had to be underground; three handicapped spaces per build-ing were allowed at-grade. Public parking or visitors and shoppers isonly available on the street.

Tra c Studies: Tra c studies and an Environmental Impact Report(EIR) were per ormed but do not a ect the density or the develop-ment ees, which are based on a ormula, and appears to be less thanItaly (especially considering the required land donations in Italy).Since more housing is desired by the city o Stuttgart, residential de-velopment is encouraged and thus is subject to ewer ees comparedto other land uses.

Hamburg

Hamburg, the largest city studied, is both a city and a state, andthere ore has more autonomy in setting development and parkingregulations. In the 1920s, Hamburg built a radial system o com-muter lines in addition to an urban metro system. Over the years,Hamburg bought land near the commuter tracks to preserve or

uture residential uses. In the late 1980s, planning began or one o these areas, known as Allermöhe. A new train station was built toserve the planned population o 12,000. The total site includes retail,apartments, lower density townhouses, our schools, and other com-munity uses. In 1995, the rst residents arrived and ew undevelopedparcels remain.

Allermöhe is essentially a stand-alone development since it is notcontiguous with an existing developed area o the city, and resemblesa Cali ornia-style “subdivision” project, with our key di erences:

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Policy Brie

10 I suspect the reason for the high motorcycle /motor scooter use in Genoa compared to theother case study cities, as shown in Figure 1, has more to do with limited parking supply than

traf c conditions or gasoline prices.




Policy Brie •It was deliberately sited next to a commuter rail line and a new train

station built or the development;

•It includes a mix of uses (retail, of ce, community center, sport elds,schools rom daycare through high school);

•There are two distinct styles of homes, for socio-economic anddemographic diversity;

•It was designed to make it easier to walk rather than drive to thetrain station and shops. Canals that help with food control and o errecreational opportunities are also e ectively used to acilitate bike andpedestrian circulation, although car access to the shops and between

homes is possible.

Density: Allermöhe is sandwiched between a railroad line and a

reeway, and surrounding land uses will remain agricultural. Landuse densities were similar to Bergedor , an established community atthe next train station. City planners also based decisions on lessonslearned rom 1970s development, rejecting high-rise residentialbuildings in avor o three and our-story apartment buildings toenhance the sense o community. Density or the apartments wasset to 0.4 GRZ / 1.2 FAR, whereas townhome density was set at 0.4GRZ / 0.8 FAR. This translates into 61 d.u. /acre and 23 d.u./acre,respectively. Schools and retail areas were allowed higher building

ootprints.

Parking: Hamburg has the most local control o parking require-

ments o all the case studies because it is both a city and a state.Although within the city center, required parking is 25 % o the city ormula, in Allermöhe, the ull parking ratio was required: 0.8 space

per apartment and 1.0 space per townhouse.

Tra c Studies: An EIR was conducted or the project but the mainconcern was mitigation o noise rom the adjacent reeway. Tra cwas not an issue; it was estimated that internal tra c would be lowand that external trips would utilize the reeway or the train.

Conclusion

The population growth o the United States is, and will continueto be, primarily concentrated in metropolitan areas composed o several, i not dozens, o di erent political jurisdictions and transitagencies. While some cities have gotten the message with respectto density, many projects were built ar rom existing mass transitstations (e.g. Santana Row in San Jose and Bay Street in Emeryville,CA). However it is hard to nd ault when there is a paucity o high-capacity transit systems and no long-range plan o where such routesmight be.

To guide TOD, a bold new approach is needed to answer the ques-tion o what comes rst—transit or density. The solution lies inregion-wide master planning or mass transit networks withoutregard to political boundaries. Just as in 1956, when the ederal gov-ernment committed to unding the Interstate System 11, the UnitedStates needs a similar visionary commitment to plan, construct, andoperate e cient, a ordable mass transit systems in every urban areaas small as 200,000 residents. It should be possible to traversethe metropolitan area via one or more mass transit modeswithout regard to arti cial boundaries, just as we can hop onan interstate and drive unaware o city and county boundaries.The larger the urban area, the more modes and lines per modeare needed. 12 Identi cation o these uture mass transit routeswould provide the needed ramework on which local govern-ments would then base their land use zoning plans.

12 A note about the SF Bay Area where I live and work: the city and county of San Francisco iswell-served by multiple rail modes, but at 49 sq. miles and 800,000 residents, this is only 1% of

the land and 11% of the population of the metropolitan area. San Jose is the most populous city,with almost 1,000,000 residents; portions have both commuter rail and light rail, but much of thecity has neither. While Alameda and Contra Costa Counties have BART lines, BART is functionallya commuter-train; these two counties have no metro or light rail. To ll these gaps, BART planning is underway in San Francisco, Alameda, and Santa Clara; however it suffers from typical American

transit planning limitations: short-range vision due to chronic budget crises endured by American transit agencies. This situation is exacerbated by the current recession and budget crises facedby many states including California. The current emphasis on jobs creation should recognize that

transit operations and construction create jobs just as building roads does. In the 2009 AmericanRecovery and Reinvestment Act, only 17% of the transportation funding was for transit.

11 Another unprecedented and visionary public project was the state of California’s 1960 MasterPlan for Higher Education, which among other things, established tuition-free community (2-year)colleges for all California residents.



Land Development and Transportation Policies for Transit-Oriented Development in Germany and Italy: Five Case Studies

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