Chicago land use policies don’t enable transit-oriented development

Michael Podgers
Chicago Cityscape’s Blog
5 min readNov 2, 2016

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Ridership on Metra, CTA, and Pace isn’t uniformly growing. CTA bus ridership is falling dramatically as buses are stuck in traffic. Combined, the system’s ridership peaked in 2012 and has been declining.

Chicago’s transit systems are punching far below their weight. This has a huge financial cost to the region’s transit agencies, and affects fares and service for riders.

The three agencies — and their host cities — should change their focus to increasing ridership on existing parts of the system before spending billions on expansion projects by addressing existing land use conflicts.

Chicago’s transit ridership is dismaying compared to Berlin and Barcelona. The three cities have comparable populations or densities, similarly sized metro systems and extensive transit networks. The largest of the metro systems, by route length, is Chicago’s ‘L’, followed by Berlin’s U-Bahn and Barcelona’s Metro.

The marked difference is the number of trips made on each system. Berlin’s U-Bahn and Barcelona’s Metro respectively see 517.4 and 416.2 million trips annually. Chicago’s ‘L’ sees less than half of Berlin’s annual ridership: 238 million trips.

Considering the three metro systems are similarly sized the lower ridership levels on Chicago’s ‘L’ means riders are either shelling out more to support the system, more subsidies are necessary to support operations, or fiscal trimming is preventing potential service improvements, and in some cases eliminating service.

Metra, CTA, and Pace must increase the ridership on existing parts of the system before spending billions on expansion projects.

Dense, built-out neighborhoods best support transit and zoning is a crucial element to improving transit ridership. Scrutinize the land use around many Chicago transit stops and it’s obvious why the transit mode share in Chicago and its suburbs is comparatively low: too few people live or work near it.

Even in dense, transit oriented neighborhoods, this density is porous, and the most visible gaps are closest to transit, where density should be greatest. Development that’s not transit-oriented — strip-malls, drive-thru restaurants, and surface parking lots — is an egregious misuse of valuable real estate that diminishes transit’s usefulness.

Chicago’s new Transit Oriented Development ordinance (TOD) is a step to correcting this, but that program needs to be reinforced with regulations that ban transit “dis-oriented” development.

Citywide transit-oriented areas are replete with this kind of low density, single-use, car oriented development. A great example of this area is the stretch of Lawrence Avenue from Kedzie to Western in the Lincoln Square neighborhood. This transit dis-oriented area is only 500 feet north of four Chicago Transit Authority Brown Line station, thus well within the city’s currently established TOD areas.

Left: Parking lots around the Western Ave. Brown Line station in Lincoln Square. Right: Areas outlined in red are built below the minimal allowable density. Areas outlined in blue are built to their max allowable density, which is low for being so close to two rapid transit stations.

Properties within a quarter mile, or within a half mile if on a designated “Pedestrian Street”, are eligible to have their parking minimum reduced to zero spaces.

Where in Chicago it’s anti-transit oriented

It is wasteful to develop near transit anything that doesn’t also support the use of transit. There is still room in city policy to be changed to reflect that.

There are many other examples in Chicago of “dis-oriented” development:

  • The Howard Transit Center in Rogers Park has only strip malls on its west edge.
  • A massive surface car parking lot is across the street from the Fullerton Red-Brown-Purple line station in Lakeview
  • The Jefferson Park Transit Center uses up a lot of space itself, and residents are resisting multi-unit buildings within a couple of blocks on land that’s either vacant or has parking.
  • The Cermak-Chinatown Red line stations are annoyingly surrounded by transit dis-oriented development
Left: Parking lots next to the 24-hour Fullerton station in Lincoln Park. Right: Parking lots next to the 24-hour Cermak-Chinatown station in Chinatown.

How to change the current land use policies

Within TOD areas, transit dis-oriented developments should be banned. The TOD ordinance is written to expand benefits to developers, kind of like an overlay district, but it doesn’t require or restrict the kinds of developments that inhibit transit use.

The next version of the TOD ordinance should begin to enforce TOD standards by setting a minimum density. Currently, even single-family houses can be built adjacent to rapid transit stations.

In the case of Lawrence Avenue in Lincoln Square zoning restricts the amount of possible potential housing units. The B-1 and B-2 zoning on these lots indeed permits mixed-use development, but the low-end floor area ratio (FAR) prevents developments with more than a handful of units.

Increasing TOD areas automatically to B-3 allows more units. Ideally, the zoning would go up to B-5 for parcels very close to a train station, which allows for developments at a scale similar to the city’s first TOD building at Ashland and Division.

Granted, even with these or other policy changes these parking lots and strip malls won’t change overnight, or even in a year. But spot zoning, which is the current practice in Chicago, puts the burden on the developer to fund the process to change the zoning district for a parcel, and keeps land use policy from being effective in determining land use.

Ridership growth has to become a focus to lower its costs, reduce pollution, and ensure low-cost transportation options for residents. City policy can alter the outlook. Communities served by transit must take a more proactive approach to supporting ridership increases by changing land use policies.

This post was adapted from its original publication on my blog, Urbanelijk.

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