As they ought, Northland, the good folks who want to develop a sizable chunk of land at the end of Needham St, have proposed a seemingly solid transportation demand management (TDM) plan, which includes shuttle bus service to Needham Heights (commuter rail), Newton Highlands (T), Boston, and Cambridge. They are also proposing 1,900 parking spaces. That’s just not consistent.
The point of the Northland TDM, as with any TDM, is to reduce the amount of driving to and from the site. Needham St. is already a daily disaster. Adding intense density at one end will only make it worse. A TDM that encourages other modes — shuttles, bikes, walking, Star Trek transporting, &c. — and discourages driving is a civic necessity. Northland is aiming for a 30% non-car mode.
A big issue is the question of Northland’s ongoing investment in the shuttle program. Sure, Northland will get the shuttle program up and running, but how can the city be assured that Northland will maintain a robust program after five years? Ten? Twenty? (Have the city run the program and tax Northland and its neighbors is one answer, but I digress.)
The key is to get Northland’s interests aligned with the city’s. And, to fully understand the challenge, we have to expose the dirty little secret of congestion. Developers don’t really have a vested interest in reducing congestion. Yesterday, I wrote about induced demand and the conclusion that adding capacity does not reduce congestion. It only adds more cars to the system. If you’re a driver, that sucks. But, if you’re a developer, more cares = more cars. A third more capacity adds a third more potential residents, office workers, or customers.
Parking works similarly. The good folks at Northland obviously don’t believe that the congestion on and into the Needham St. corridor makes very intense development on the site a non-starter. They know the traffic situation as well as anybody. That their development will exacerbate traffic is not a commercial concern. And, while they don’t want to be forced to build unnecessary parking (which is both an expense and an opportunity cost), they seem to have made the calculation that 1900 or so spaces make economic sense. The project works with that volume of parking.
But, as Jake Auchincloss explained in economic terms in his newsletter, parking leads to driving leads to congestion. Those 1900 new spaces are going to generate new traffic into and out of the Northland development. Presumably, the site is economically viable with the number of people driving that 1900 parking spaces supports. Northland had the opportunity at Tuesday’s Land Use public hearing to say, “We’re investing in the TDM because our project depends on it.” They didn’t say it.
So, on the one hand, Northland is saying “eat your vegetables” and, on the other hand, saying “here, have a fistful of candy.” There is a fundamental tension between Northland’s commercial interest and their — apparently sincere — effort to minimize the impact of their commercial interest.
The city can make it simpler. Create a situation where it is in Northland’s economic self-interest to create and maintain an even more robust TDM. Make the viability of the project depend on Northland’s ability to get people to the site other than by car by severely limiting their ability to get people to the site by car.
Reduce parking on the site.1
Reduce parking from 1900 to 1000 spaces. Or to 500 spaces. Reduce parking to some negotiated number that makes it critical for Northland to maintain a private transit system while still allowing a reasonable return on investment. If the city reduces parking significantly, we won’t have to ask how we can be sure that Northland will maintain its shuttles. We’ll know Northland has to to survive.
1Yes, reducing parking on-site will create demand for parking off-site. If that’s your concern, mention it in the comments and I’ll address the issue in a future post.
Sean,
With all due respect, the issue is not whether Northland will maintain the shuttle system. Northland is in the business of making money, and if the shuttle system works it will make them money, so they will maintain it.
The issue is whether the shuttle system can work within the financial and infrastructure constrains we live in. In other words, can a shuttle system be designed to work in, as you so aptly described it, “the daily disaster” that is Needham Street at a cost that is sustainable long-term. The answer, from the materials presented by Northland and the peer reviewers so-far appears to be: no.
The first problem is that there is just not enough data available to accurately estimate potential ridership (this is according to Northland’s own consultant, The 128 Business Council).
The second problem is the nature of this site — Needham Street connects route 95 to route 9, and it also serves as part of a cut-through of route 95 to the masspike. According to multiple studies, 70% of the traffic along this street is pass-through traffic, which will not be reduced by a shuttle bus system. This is one of the reasons that the city’s traffic/parking peer reviewer made it clear that they think the plan to more than double the number of people taking public transportation at this site is unrealistic, even if Northland implements the option it calls its “robust” shuttle plan.
This matches other observations, as well. The city’s economic impact peer reviewer earlier found that the amount of planned retail space is not sustainable by a population “within a 5-minute drive” of the site. Northland countered that Needham Street is becoming popular with home-improvement style stores and that they expect their customers to come from outside this 5-minute drive radius. Unsaid, but a fairly clear implication is that these shoppers will drive to the site.
Additionally, while there is much about the shuttle bus plan we do not yet know, the proposed frequency (45-60 minute intervals on most routes) will not make them a viable alternative to driving and/or Uber/Lyft (imagine missing a bus by 2 minutes and being an hour late for work). And at the end of the day, these buses will sit in the same traffic as everyone else.
Building less parking won’t make the area any more accessible without a car and won’t help align the city’s needs with the developer’s plans. It will just cause the entire project to fail. And that would be a shame. We have the opportunity to create a mixed-use development at this site that will work with the existing neighborhoods and will become a model for other mixed use development in the city and the state. Trying to squeeze in a project that will generate too much traffic by artificially reducing the amount of parking will either result in empty storefronts or parking nightmares offsite. A better solution is a smaller project.
Parking and traffic management are important things. Here’s my concern… Because of the size of this project the developer should be building the city a school. But because no one in city government today could negotiate their way out of a paper bag, we’re talking about shuttle buses.
Sean, I agree with your position on parking, but I cannot agree with your premise that Northland is solely to blame here.
Newton’s zoning code requires a surfeit of parking, and the City Council will not likely approve a huge parking waiver on a special permit. Indeed, when residential development that includes affordable housing comes in for a special permit, neighbors and City Councilors from the ward will frequently demand more rather than less parking, because they do not believe that affordable units actually require fewer parking spaces.
So, even if Northland came in for a parking waiver to provide fewer parking spaces per residential unit and commercial tenant, getting the City Council to approve a special permit would be an even steeper uphill battle than it already is.
Ted, agreed: our zoning code is off its rocker when it comes to parking requirements. The developer is already asking for a huge waiver on the by-right parking requirements, though, and the land use committee isn’t batting an eye. No reason to think that if the developer reduces the amount further, as Sean and I have argued, that the council would necessarily push back.
In fact, I’m willing to say that if the developer DOESN’T reduce the parking further, and thereby lease up the project with tenants who self-select into a car-lite lifestyle, then they will not get the votes they need to pass it.
Ted,
There are 822 units proposed by Northland. Of them, only 15% (123) are slated to be affordable; the rest will be market-rate. Even if we were to believe that affordable units require less parking (and it’s not clear why they should), the majority of the project is not affordable.
Further, this is a mixed-use project; there will be employees travelling to office buildings and retail establishments, as well as shoppers and diners coming to those same retail establishments. A key demographic to be served by a robust mixed-use development at this site are folks living west of us — it would provide them a better alternative than going all the way into Boston for their dining/entertainment needs, but those folks will not be able to take public transportation to the site.
Again, in a vacuum, what Jake/Sean propose sounds good, and it will continue to sound good as long as they choose to continue to ignore the actual facts on the ground. Once we look at the whole picture, though, it all falls apart.
Do not disregard the parking needed for those individuals who come from South Newton or Wellesley and Needham who may want to take the shuttles to work.
We can dance around concepts like parking, shuttles and affordable housing all we want, but the true issue is one of physics. You simply can’t stuff 50 lbs of food into a 110 lb person!
Councilor Auchincloss, I urge you and your fellow Councilors to consider a test and learn approach to zoning and permitting. Start the shuttle program now. Allow for the build of 200 units. If the growth is sustainable, allow them to build 200 more. If not, updated the zoning from residential to Senior Housing (you seemed to have favored this idea).
The concern you are hearing from your constituents is the (warranted) fear of massive, force fed change, all at once. If this project and TDM is the way of the future, let them evolve organically and incrementally; on its own merits and proof of success.
Has there been any measurement of the impact of the “new” Kendrick exit off 95 on through traffic on Needham Street?
Max,
Sadly, the city and state do woeful data collection. I’ve repeatedly proposed that a condition of special permits be rigorous baselines with permanent data gathering tools installed.
It would be so cheap to install technology to capture real-time trip time on Needham St.
Rather than an elaborate shuttle system double the service on the Bus Route 59 supplement from Newton Highlands to Pettee Square in Upper Falls with the consequent improved service to T and the Commuter rail in Needham and see what happens.
AT a minimum, the space for the community meeting space should be made a available for a school site to replace the outrageous situation of children from Upper Falls be sent to three elementary schools with the consequent permanent public expense for busing and parental iinconvenience , Throw in the Elliot Street section of Newton Highlands etc. as necessary. If the development needs a lot of traffic offet, make the developer build the school on Oak Street.