OD01: Designing Integrated Transit for Sustainable Cities

Christof Spieler, PE, AICP, LEED AP – Vice President and Director of Planning, Huitt-Zollars

Jaime McKay, MA – Deputy Director, Transit Services Division, Frederick County, Maryland

Brandie Lockett, LEED AP ND – City Designer, City of Houston, Public Works

Christof Spieler, PE, AICP, LEED AP – Vice President and Director of Planning, Huitt-Zollars

Session Description: Planners, developers, and civic leaders understand the value of good transit in sustainability, equality, and building more livable cities. In this session, practitioners with backgrounds in engineering, planning, architecture, and urban design, and experience in transit agencies, cities, consulting, and advocacy, will present the integrated design methods it actually takes to turn those ideas into reality. Transit planners understand that land use and transit are intrinsically linked; to be useful, transit alignments must allow fast, reliable service, and stops must be surrounded by activity. Christof Spieler, author of “Trains, Buses, People: an opinionated atlas of US Transit” will outline the principles of how to do that, relate it to LEED criteria, and give examples from across the US and Canada of where development and transit has been integrated well, and where it hasn’t. A transit trip is door to door, not stop-to-stop, and origins and destinations are only one piece of the transit puzzle. Useful transit connects people to places with safe and comfortable paths for people on foot, on bikes, and in wheelchairs. Jaime McKay, Deputy Director, at Frederick, Maryland TransIT, will talk about how to create these connections, with examples of easily implementable retrofits and advanced planning and construction efforts, alongside how to effectively engage the communities these connections serve. Great transit becomes an integral part of the neighborhood it serves. Urban design can solve safety and accessibility challenges while creating great places people want to spend time in. Brandie Lockett, urban designer at the City of Houston, will talk about how cities, transit, agencies and developers can work together to integrate transit stops into sidewalks and plazas while incorporating stormwater, heat island effects, and other sustainability features. Integrating transit with neighborhoods requires an interdisciplinary approach that’s centered on the people who will live, work, plan, and use transit.