For more than 100 Years the Reading Terminal Market has been the grocer, deli, cheese shop, bakery, and so mucyh else to commuters in Philadelphia. Steam Locamotives once stopped overhead but now Reading is served underground by SEPTA. Photo Scheib

Shoppers could always tell when the train arrived by the sound of 700,000 pounds of steel laboring to a halt a few dozen feet overhead.  The Reading Terminal Market was a natural expression of commerce when it opened in 1893 in downtown Philadelphia.  People coursed through the ground level collection of shops on the way up to the train platforms, a convenient shopping trip incorporated with transportation. 

Things change.  Today the Reading Terminal Market is still bustling center of trade where fruits, vegetables, meats, and cheeses—real foods, not boutique fare—are sold, but the trains are now SEPTA heavy rail and operate underground (the last train ran in 1984 and the old station is now a convention center).  Elsewhere, however, transit and commerce have largely parted ways.

Rail systems have had a long history of supporting surrounding land uses, of creating walkable districts around stations where commercial development naturally congregates.  But slightly less common, even in rail-based systems, is the inclusion of services within the station itself.  Some American systems include newsstands, food vendors, and other retail outlets in station mezzanines, but this is usually the limit of co-location inside transit facilities.

Transfer stations are often utilitarian and very basic in design in keeping with the cost-cutting ethos of modern local government, especially among bus-based American transit systems.  There may be vending machines or even a coffee stand, but little other trade happens.  Some transit authorities, however, have begun to recognize that co-locating transfer facilities with other land uses can make transfer facilities more useful to passengers and perhaps also generate extra revenue for the transit agency.

Most successful transit companies see themselves as being in the business of providing travel, and as such their facilities are focused narrowly on providing transportation.  Up until the late 1990s FTA all but assured this by allowing its fund only to be used on projects “physically or functionally related to transit,” which was narrowly interpreted to mean transit stations and parking lots.  In 1997, as a result of petitioning by several transit properties, FTA clarified its position allowing for mixed-use development on FTA funded sites, a major shot-in-the-arm for transit oriented development.

A computer rendering and photo of progress on the Multimodal Transit Station in Petersburg, VA. The station will include child care. Images courtesy of design firm Wendel Duchscherer.

FTA’s position change means fewer missed opportunities.  Commuters who drive rather than use transit often cite trip chaining (being able to run errands on the way to or from work) as a major advantage of driving over transit.  In a car it is very easy to drop off or pick up children at day care, whereas accomplishing this same task by bus would likely require two otherwise unnecessary and time-consuming bus transfers.  This makes public transportation extremely unappealing for the working parent.  But many errands encountered in auto trip chains could easily be incorporated into bus transfer stations such as child care, banking, and dry cleaning.  Such designs represent a two-fold benefit to transit companies: extra revenue collected from amenity operators can provide supplementary income to the agency, and newly available transit trip chaining opportunities encourage new choice riders to try transit.  There are also considerable benefits of such strategies to transit-dependent riders, who will no longer need to make special trips to access services now available in the terminal, thereby increasing customer satisfaction.

A federally-funded transit project that includes amenities, however, can face some regulatory hurdles.  The Federal Transit Administration offers lengthy and in-depth guidance for the requirements of “joint developments,” generally seeming to favor the concept of co-location.  However, if the feds fund the project, there are certain complications that arise.  Some of the restrictions are fairly straightforward; for example, the joint development project can not result in a net loss to the agency in terms of both monetary and nonmonetary benefits.

Depending on which federal grants are funding the project, Buy America clauses may apply to the steel used for facility construction.  In some cases, it may even be necessary to ensure foreign-made construction materials arrive in this country on US-registered cargo ships.  And the structure needs to be certified as meeting “seismic safety standards,” which probably makes a lot of sense for projects on the Pacific coast, but perhaps not elsewhere in the nation.  Furthermore, if FTA dollars are used to help construct a for-profit section of a transit facility, such as a retail shop, then the transit provider needs to return a reasonable share of the lease income on that space to the FTA.   A day care owner seeking to open a new facility would not normally be required to satisfy the Buy America act, and might be put off by such complications and possible added expense.  These are just some of the hurdles that may be discouraging more transit co-location.

At the Linden Transfer Center transit passengers can access child care. A slide can be seen above the fence. Photo courtesy of COTA.

Despite these complications, the co-location model seems to be gaining in popularity.  Some American transit systems have successfully embraced this approach, and many proposed projects include amenities as part of the design.  The Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) Linden Transit Center incorporates a bank, daycare, children’s hospital, the Columbus Health Department and a Planned Parenthood office.  The 39^th & Troost MetroCenter in Kansas City, Missouri, has a satellite police station in the same building as transit and childcare.  A new transfer center in Petersburg, VA not only incorporates a day care center, but also includes the local Greyhound station and a downtown parking garage.  The city views the new transfer station as a key step towards redeveloping the central area.  Indeed, the inclusion of tenants and uses beyond transportation alone could very well help Petersburg’s new transit center breathe life into a dilapidated downtown. 

In smaller systems that “pulse” timed-transfers, a transit only station can make surrounding areas less appealing.  During transfers the station may be full of life, but when those five or ten minutes are over it is becomes an empty, uninviting swath of concrete, which does nothing to promote urbanism.  Mixing uses within the transfer facility helps encourage a consistently pro-urban environment near the transit station.  The children playing in a day care center playground bring life to the street at all hours of the day, and a farmers market planned for the public square in front of the Petersburg facility might even bring people to the transit station who would never have considered using the transit system in the first place.

Another good example of this trend can be found in a new remote bus transfer facility planned for Tallahassee, Florida.  A New Urban community in the southeast quadrant of that city has brought thousands of jobs and residents to an area that was completely vacant just fifteen years earlier; as new bus services were introduced, it became clear the neighborhood was a prime location for a new bus transfer facility.  At the same time, the population growth also merited a new branch library in the same area.  Rather than build a library and transfer center separately, the concept was introduced to build the library and support offices over the transit waiting area, thus making more efficient use of space and ensuring a more pleasant and vibrant urban environment near the transit station.  By planning these facilities together in a single project, both the library system and the transit network will make more efficient use of land and site-level capital costs (the county is eligible for federal funds to build the library that the transit agency could not get on its own).  Plus, transit riders will have the opportunity to check out or return books as a part of their transit trip, increasing the utility of the transit line to potential riders.

As transit providers continue thinking of transportation as part of a wider urban system, more opportunities for co-location will present themselves.  Transportation is not something that can or should be considered as separate from the daily lives of its users.  There is a close relationship between the transit trip and the life of the user who makes that trip.  Transit riders do not demand transit in and of itself; they demand it as a means of accessing work, home, recreation or shopping.  Co-locating amenities with transit is a means of improving the utility of transit as a means of access for its users.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2010 Amenities issue of Trip Planner Magazine.