3.3.4. Brightline

A larger development known as Brightline, Florida has been set up as a purely private rail project using a TAC approach. The project began by leveraging funding from a New York hedge fund based on private sector opportunities around new stations as well as potential fare box returns.

The first stage of the Brightline was developed in partnership with the local and county governments and the local community [7,45]. It opened in late 2017, initially running from Miami to Fort Lauderdale, but with an extension to Orlando International Airport under construction, and further extensions to Disney World and Tampa in planning [46]. There are also plans to build a new line from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

The latter project includes purchasing 38 acres of land adjacent to the Las Vegas strip for the station and a mixed-use development. It came about via the acquisition of Xpress-West, which had secured federal approvals for the rail corridor [47]. The company plans to expand further and describes its business model as "a scalable model for twenty-first century passenger travel in North America" and identifies eight new potential corridors within the United States and Canada [48]. Thus, by taking an organic approach the corridor was eventually completed and the model is now being replicated.

In practice Transit Activated Corridors raise investment for transit through partnerships that grow organically as the land development opportunities are realized and expanded. This minimizes risk for participating private parties and increasingly shifts towards private funding to complete projects. Hence this can reduce government's role especially in terms of having to raise the full capital (often difficult and compared with the ERM/TAC model less value creating) allowing a focus on roles more aligned to the purview of governmen<sup>t</sup> such as being critical in the delivery partnerships. Government needs to provide creative leadership on zoning, planning integration, and facilitating connections to the wider transit network. Government can also assist with land assembly and risk managemen<sup>t</sup> in procurement [7], easing the process for private parties to participate and creating new value. Similarly, for the public sector, project-based implementation risk is reduced through sharing with the private sector in this organic stepwise process.

The application of these three principles of effectuation will be a key determinant of the success of the application of the ERM model to deliver Transit Activated Corridors. There are also a range of governmen<sup>t</sup> tools in urban planning that can be delivered in partnership with developers and investors, and which can help create Transit Activated Corridors.

#### **4. Theoretical Basis 3: Urban Planning Tools for Fast Transit Corridors and Walkable Station Precincts**

Urban development and infrastructure are best developed when they are part of both a strategic and a statutory framework. The majority of these planning systems, especially in Australia and America, still enable urban sprawl and associated car-based communities and have a lesser focus on enabling transit and urban regeneration. There is however a growing movement to find new ways that urban planning can produce effective corridor transit and TODs. These approaches will be examined in terms of tools for corridor design that facilitate transit and dense urbanism as in a TAC, as well as tools for walkable urban design in the associated TODs. Thus, two more principles have been selected from urban planning tools to help design, finance and deliver Transit Activated Corridors.

#### *4.1. Principle 4: Define Transit Activated Corridors*

The first planning tool for creating a high-quality transit system down a corridor is to declare it or zone it in strategic and statutory plans as primarily for transit and dense urbanism. A series of such plans are being developed around the world since Transport for London declared their policy called "Street Families" [49] which sets out the streets that give priority to transit and where density will be given special encouragement. In Melbourne the Victorian Government has a policy called the "Movement and Place" framework which recognizes that streets are not only about moving people from A to B, but in many contexts also act as places for people and public life. Similar policies have been developed for Auckland, New Zealand, and Western Australia. The movement and place framework enables the "place" prioritization of streets to create walkable, livable centers. In Perth the approach has been proposed to create a "Green Route" in the Metropolitan Region Scheme that requires transit priority and density to be the joint focus along the road. Such routes could be specified as potential Transit Activated Corridors with associated zoning along the corridor.

This approach is increasingly being used in the UK and Europe more generally as part of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans [50]. The approach is outlined in Table 1 below.

**Table 1.** Summary of guidelines for sustainable urban mobility plans compared to traditional planning. Source [50].


A core part of designing TACs would be a set of detailed design options for how a mid-tier transit service like light rail or a trackless tram (see below) could travel at speed down a clearway where road space is available, and then slow down when it enters a station precinct where the design and place focus would be to facilitate walkability and pedestrian activity. The latter part of the road works could be the responsibility of the private sector partners. This would send the signal that dense urban development would be favored as it would have a high-quality transit system linking it to the rest of the city and would have a highly attractive urban design quality for attracting people-based activities in and around the stations.

The responsibility to enable TACs would be given to an agency, or cross-agency group, that has both responsibility for delivering transit and delivering urban regeneration. Thus, roads chosen for this category would shift their priority for providing mobility services for through traffic, to a focus on how they could enable quality transit and urban design along the corridor that delivers value to both developers and the community. This would mean more of a focus on accessibility, sustainability and equity as set out in Table 1. Compared with car only lanes such routes could carry the equivalent of six lanes of traffic [51], easing congestion issues while increasing activity along the corridor through transit and urbanism.

#### *4.2. Principle 5: Walkable and Sustainable Station Precinct Design*

Station precincts must be allowed to be dense and mixed use in the strategic and statutory zoning systems used to enable TACs. There are a large number of design tools created to make station precincts or TODs into "inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable" places including walkable urban design, solar design, water sensitive design, biophilic design, affordable housing design and most of all integrated design. For instance, there are a number of detailed manuals from the Congress of New Urbanism that set out best practice in these areas [52–55]. Such guidance now needs to be reflected in statutory requirements for station precinct developments along transit corridors. Such requirements also need to consider how new technologies for smart and sustainable systems can enhance various design outcomes. This may include how driverless electric shuttle buses can carry people to the station precincts (providing first and last kilometer solutions) without ruining the walkability qualities of the area [30]. Evidence is showing that Uber (and potentially driverless vehicles) are increasing the vehicle kilometers travelled (VKT) rather than decreasing it as many had anticipated, causing greater congestion and accessibility issues [56]. To counter this trend will require a different approach to mobility and TACs are likely to be part of this.

#### **5. Applying Transit Activated Corridor Development with Mid-Tier Transit**

A research project as part of the Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre (SBEnrc) has been developed with a series of partners seeking to deliver a mid-tier transit-based TAC using the ERM approach. It was given a significant boost when a new transit technology was discovered that we have called a "Trackless Tram". The trackless tram systems (TTS) have taken six innovations from high-speed rail, put them in a carriage bus—or tram like vehicle—with stabilization through bogeys and optical guidance systems, that not only mean it is largely autonomous (though not completely driverless), but it is also enabled to move at speed down a road with the ride quality of a light rail. Being electric through batteries and with no need for steel tracks, it is significantly cheaper and easier to implement than a light rail and significantly better than BRT at creating urban land value uplift. Research was conducted on assessing this technology [51] and the conclusions are presented in Table 2.


**Table 2.** Indicative comparison of characteristics of corridor based urban rapid transit systems.

The assessment provided above highlights that TTS has the potential to stimulate urban redevelopment potential just as well as good light rail and hence can enable the delivery of TACs. This will require assessment in different cities, but an approach is suggested using the five principles developed from the three entrepreneurial principles and the two urban planning tools. This enables a high-level approach to assess the potential to deliver very efficient and effective Transit Activated Corridors using a mid-tier transit as the catalyst. The core requirements from the five principles for TAC are applied to the three options of BRT, LRT and TTS and are set out in Table 3. This enables us to see how well the new technology of TTS promises to facilitate a TAC.

**Table 3.** Comparison of TAC characteristics for corridor based urban rapid transit systems of BRT, LRT and TTS.



**Table 3.** *Cont.*

The high-level assessment would sugges<sup>t</sup> there is a very high capability of a trackless tram system and a light rail to enable a TAC to be created with a quality transit corridor and a chain of high-quality station precincts linked to it. These results are summarized in Table 4.

**Table 4.** Indicative comparison of characteristics of corridor based urban rapid transit systems in terms of entrepreneurship and urban planning factors supporting a Transit Activated Corridor.

