I’ve been trying to figure out what my actual theory of change is for my work in transit so here’s my attempt at writing it down.
I know I care about making transit and cities better. But what does that look like?
I’ve been thinking about this question a lot, because it’s hard to actualize without specifics.
Here’s my working theory of change:
I would like to improve transit by:
- providing high quality, frequent transit service to transit supportive parcels
- making it easier to live in the existing transit supportive parcels (improving access to jobs or lowering the cost of housing)
- expanding the envelope of transit supportive parcels
The key word here is “transit supportive parcels.” With this, I recognize that effective transit is really the result of optimal land use. Land use is things like, the density of a parcel, the arrangement of roads, the location of housing and jobs etc. There are many places in the United States, or the world, that just are not conducive to good transit. There are other places that are.
Generally, a parcel is a transit supportive parcel if it has some level of density (at least 3,000 people per square mile but ideally 10,000 people per square mile).
As a first approximation, we could highlight every parcel in the country that has a population density of 10,000 people per square mile. For each of these parcels, we could evaluate the quality of the transit that serves those parcels (frequency + reliability + span of service). Additionally, for each parcel we could identify the principle challenge of people in that parcel.
For example, an older, dense large rust belt city might struggle with the lack of suitable job opportunities, high crime, or poor public services. A rural, dense city might struggle with poor job opportunities and poor connectivity to other cities. Economic development will play a role here. A high density census tract in New York or San Francisco will struggle with housing costs that are unaffordable for most people. Policies to build more housing, stabilize rents, and provide for affordable housing will be most important here.
The intervention will depend on the nature of the parcel, but it should be possible (theoretically) to classify each parcel according to the type of intervention it needs.
I would guess that transit supportive parcels would fall into two broad categories, as outlined above. The first is older, rust-belt cities that grew before the advent of automobiles. Since they grew around transit, the land use is often suitable for transit use. Many (Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Baltimore) have legacy heavy or light rail systems, and have many people already using transit. The issue here is that often there aren’t a large number of good jobs that would attract people. Or, the dominant industry is something like healthcare, where you have many high income jobs and low income jobs but not a lot of middle income jobs.
The second are parcels in cities like SF and New York City, which have vibrant job markets (the economic part is already handled) but are really unaffordable. So the solution is to make housing cheaper
To actualize the third point, we could generate a second map that identifies parcels that have varying degrees of population density (anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000), especially those that are adjacent to high density areas. Transit oriented development can help to increase population densities and make transit more effective.
I assume this policy will be strongest where demand is highest, which are more expensive, high rent areas. I could also see this working in some less economically dynamic cities, especially in the urban core where there’s a resurgent demand in denser living, and in the wealthier suburbs of the core cities where there are job opportunities and good services, and latent demand for housing that isn’t just single family homes.
Map for action
This theory of change also provides a few ways to actualize this. In some places, like Singapore, there are centralized agencies that coordinate all of this. The US system is much more decentralized but I do think in an ideal world we would have some sort of state or national agency doing this kind of work.
But you could credibly work on this in a variety of places:
- providing high quality, frequent transit service to transit supportive parcles
- Action: transit operations, transit priority, local/state politics (transit funding, transit priority)
- making it easier to live in the existing transit supportive parcels (improving access to jobs or lowering the cost of housing)
- Action (improving access to jobs): economic development
- Action 2 (lowering the cost of housing): real estate development, affordable housing development and finance, local/state politics (zoning reform, housing financing)
- expanding the envelope of transit supportive parcels
- Action: real estate development, local/state politics (zoning reform, housing financing)