There is a fallacy to smart growth that people rarely consider. The idea is that increasing the density of housing development will result in a decrease in traffic congestion whereas the truth is quite the opposite. Putting more people in a smaller space increases the demand on resources and infrastructure.

Not everyone in a Transit Oriented Development (TOD) like those that are being considered along the fixed rail project on Oahu are going to ride the rail, bike or walk to work. The majority are still going to commute by automobile. This has been the experience of cities like Portland Oregon which is considered the poster child for smart growth.

Even though a TOD in Portland was designed to have only .61 parking places per resident the number of autos is substantially greater. Residents park illegally in the streets in such numbers that the police don’t even bother to write tickets. The parking problem is not considered a high priority in comparison to such pressing issues as fighting crime.

The cost of Transit Oriented Developments is substantially greater than typical residential developments. Since most Transit Oriented Developments are designed as mixed-use developments with commercial shops targeted for the first floor and apartments above, the safety and other regulations are more rigorous. This drives up the cost of the TOD and makes the housing less affordable.

There is a connection between how expensive a TOD is to build and how many floors it has. The Honolulu City Council is considering a bill to increase the flexibility of height limits to allow for greater density. The more floors the TOD will have the more regulation and foundation infrastructure needed and thus the more expensive the final product will be, making housing less affordable.

The price of housing within a quarter mile of a TOD increases the closer one gets to the TOD and the transit station, despite assertions by proponents of the opposite. In fact, the expense of building mixed use Transit Oriented Developments is so high that they rarely get built without substantial tax breaks and subsidies on the part of the city where they are built. This is the only way they are affordable at all.

The higher density equates to more people needing to use resources in a given area. Despite the idea of creating “walkable communities” there can never be enough jobs in a mixed used development to provide jobs for all who live there. The majority will have to commute and while a percentage will take public transit the majority, about 90 percent or more, will still commute by auto.

These people will then have the problem of commuting out of the area of the TOD. This will increase traffic congestion around the TOD and the other roads and major thoroughfares. The number of transit users will never keep pace with the increase of population created by the Transit Oriented Developments.
 
So the common wisdom that Transit Oriented Developments along with rail transit is going to help mitigate traffic congestion is not correct. It is going to have the opposite effect which is the experience of cities all across the nation. It is too bad that Honolulu is going to buy into this fallacy that has been proven wrong so many times before.
  
Donald Newman is a policy analyst with the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii.