The Role of Transit in Community Planning

MR. HUMPHREYS: There is an exact science and much engineering romance behind the small ticket we place in the fare-box of our electric cars and motor buses. Canada shares that science and engineering with the United States, and this is well done through two fine associations -The Canadian Transit Association and The American Transit Association.

Our guest, Mr. Charles Gordon, is managing director of The American Transit Association. He has been to Canada to discuss transit problems with our industry many times, But it seemed desirable that more of us should share Mr. Gordon's extensive and varied experience on matters affecting so many Canadians. Thus, he has kindly accepted our invitation.

Except for United States' Army Aero Service during World War I, Mr. Gordon has been identified with the transit industry since his degree in engineering from the University of Illinois in 1912. Our guest has had much practical experience, chiefly with the Chicago surface lines. Afterwards, he became western editor of the Electric Railway Journal and the magazine Bus Transportation. Coming to New York in 1925, he took the editor's chair of the Transit Journal, but a few years later was unanimously selected as managing director of The American Transit Association, continuing in that capacity for the past 14 years.

One of Mr. Gordon's first projects was to organize the Presidents' Conference Committee (P.C.C.) of the American Transit Association. It was that committee which developed the now well-known P.C.C. car, of which Toronto is the possessor of several hundred. Indeed, the engineering history of the P.C.C. car would, in itself, make an interesting address.

Much more could be said of Mr. Gordon's work and influence for the benefit of the local rider, whether he be in the United States, Canada, Britain, or elsewhere, but we are anxious to hear Mr. Gordon's address.

Gentlemen: Mr. Charles Gordon.

MR. GORDON: It seems appropriate that on this 11th of November, marking the date of the Armistice in the last war, we should be considering the making of plans for the future--in this instance, community plans. The whole idea of planning today is perhaps of greater interest because most thinking people feel that if we had done a better job 25 years ago, the world would not have fallen once more into the shambles from which we are now again trying to extricate it.

There is some danger that in our current enthusiasm for planning, we may fall into the error of assuming that the mere making of plans is in itself a good thing. For that reason we need to keep in mind that there can be bad plans as well as good plans; that a prerequisite to the making of good plans is a broad basic knowledge and understanding of accumulated experience in a particular field of endeavor.

Unless the planner is thus equipped, it is too much to expect that his plans-regardless of how idealistic and desirable their objectives will work when put to the test of execution. As a prominent industrialist in the United States said some years ago, "There is as much difference between planning improvements and making improvements, as there is between feeling good and being good.

In the field of community planning, a long forward step has, in my judgment, recently been made. Even while Germany was trying to bomb London out of existence in this war, a comprehensive plan for the redevelopment of a large part of the London area was in the making. This plan, prepared for the London County Council and recently published, was undoubtedly forged in the midst of that city's heroic struggle for survival, which won for the British the admiration of the remaining free peoples of the world.

Perhaps, because of these circumstances under which much of the work must have been done, or because the authors were inspired by the fact that they were dealing with the destiny of the world's greatest city; most authorities who have so far expressed themselves seem agreed that the work is a monumental one which will serve as a pattern and an inspiration to other community planners everywhere.

It is interesting to note that a plan for the redevelopment of battle scarred London is published even while the struggle for freedom and civilization still rages. For the need of such a plan was apparent many years before the blitz started. And similarly, in almost every large American city today, the making of postwar community plans is rapidly gaining momentum, even though, thank God, there has been none of the bombing and physical destruction here, that is being experienced by the cities abroad.

All over America--both in the United States and Canada--there are rapidly multiplying plans for postwar improvements. There are plans for slum clearances, for new housing projects. Plans for playgrounds and other recreational areas are being actively sponsored, as they should be, of course. Spectacular highway plans seem to have a fascination for many. Perhaps, this is because such plans can be presented in futuristic panoramas that appeal to the eye and to the imagination, for we all like to imagine ourselves rolling down a great, broad highway, in a luxurious car, escaping from the restraints and cares of a work-a-day world. There are so many organizations planning postwar improvements and actively promoting them, both as desirable in themselves and also as projects for postwar employment, that it is extremely difficult to keep abreast of them all.

One feature that characterizes the promotion of the more ambitious of these plans seems to be a tendency to stress the advantages that would accrue-while relegating as far into the background as possible, the awkward item of cost.

Why all of this sudden interest in community planning and rehabilitation?

Simply because, at long last, many people are beginning to realize that something is radically wrong with our cities; that the situation has been getting steadily worse for a considerable time; and that unless steps are taken at once to reverse in the immediate postwar period, when building is resumed, the trends which had been gaining momentum for a number of years before the outbreak of war, our American cities will be destroyed from within just as effectively-if not so spectacularly-as bombing is destroying the cities of Europe and Asia..

During the past fifty years, in the United States, there has been a great shift in the relative population of urban and rural areas. The number of inhabitants of cities trebled, while rural population increased a bare one-third during this period. As a consequence, most major social problems are encountered in cities or in urban areas. They arise because of the changes in the living conditions to which a large proportion of the people have been subjected and are magnified by the rapidity with which the shift has occurred. The commercial and industrial activities which are centred in cities also make them the nuclei or nerve centre of our exceedingly delicate and complex economic mechanism. Accordingly, anything which affects the stability and orderly development of cities is a matter of national as well as local concern.

Our cities all over America are figuratively exploding. Perhaps this phenomena is more apparent in the United States than it is in Canada. If so, it is merely because the basic causes are a little further developed on our side of the border. Our cities are spreading out in random fashion with no apparent plan of control, over much larger areas than seems necessary or rational. At the same time much vacant land lies totally undeveloped within the boundaries of existing cities while a widening belt of built up property, radiating from the business centres, deteriorates into blighted districts.

As this process continues, and as people must travel considerably greater distances from their homes to central business areas, the difficulties, inconveniences and dangers of local travel increase rapidly. Efforts to improve the situation by the widening of streets and the construction of new express highways, undertaken in many instances at great public expense, seem to afford only temporary relief, while cities struggle under the financial burdens thus contracted.

It is obvious that no community rehabilitation plans can be effective which do not provide fully for the solution of this local travel problem. For a major purpose of the very existence of cities, is to provide the opportunity for convenient personal contact for business, social and cultural purposes. It is because of this that accessibility is a major factor in determining the value of any given piece of urban property. That location in a city is most valuable which is most accessible to the greatest number of people. Accordingly, it is futile to attempt to build a beautiful city if the arteries of commerce are so choked that the purposes of the existence of the city are defeated. So likewise is it futile to attempt to achieve better housing, more adequate parks and playgrounds and the many other necessary social and esthetic features of a modern city unless an adequate circulatory system is also assumed to promote orderly and suitable development and use of commercial and residential areas in their most advantageous relationship. External beauty can follow only as a natural consequence of functional and economic well being-for then only is a community financially able . to support the amenities.

Decentralization alone does not afford a remedy for local travel difficulties. On the contrary, when brought about, as it has been in large measure, by our effort to run away from past mistakes instead of remedying them, decentralization merely shifts the incidence of traffic congestion and multiplies the seriousness of the problem by increasing the number of congested points within an urban area. As this process continues it is readily apparent that every home owner and every investor in a business or in business property stands in imminent danger of finding his assets impaired by some unexpected shift of population or activity to a new location.

We need to have a better understanding of the causes and remedies of the difficulties that confront us in cities. Only then may me hope to be really successful in bringing about the stability and orderly development and the improved living conditions for urban dwellers that we all so ardently desire.

A very brief analysis of the three major stages in the development of American cities may help to throw light on the subject.

Before 1880 the area of cities was limited by the distances which could be traversed in a reasonable time between home and work or business, on foot, on horseback or in animal drawn vehicles. In this period, cities were limited to an area extending about two or two and a half miles from the centre.

Between 1880 and 1910, the second stage, introduction of the electric street car extended the practicable radius of population distribution, and hence of potential urban development, to a distance of approximately five miles. During this period, also, there occurred in America a great influx of immigration, and simultaneously due to industrialization, city population grew much more rapidly than rural. Accordingly, within each city, the magic combination of population increase and improved transportation, set up centrifugal and centripetal forces which were far reaching in their effects. Value was added to the outlying sections as improved transportation made them more accessible to the centre, and at the same time central values rose as the trade area was enlarged.

Our cities grew so spectacularly, and the process continued over so long a period of time, that the idea became firmly established that the resulting rise in city property values would continue indefinitely.

Thus when a new and radical product of our industrial age appeared, which ushered in the third stage of city development and which was to have a most profound effect upon the whole pattern of urban living, its significance was scarcely noted and its full influence is not yet generally recognized--even after some thirty years.

I refer, of course, to the automobile.

In a very few years after its crude beginnings, this remarkable product of our industrial age was developed into a vehicle that everyone wanted to own. At the same time its manufacturers introduced a technique of mass production that brought the cost down to the point where vast numbers could be sold. Thereupon, all former concepts of transportation limits and acceptable standards were quickly dissipated. The potential area of urbanization jumped from its former five mile radius to fifteen or twenty miles. It needs but a knowledge of the fact that the area of a circle is proportional to the square of its radius, to visualize what a far reaching change this represented. This potential city area increased from approximately 75 square miles to about 700 square miles, or almost 1,000 percent.

Note, also, that while this radical change was taking place, the curve of population increase of cities was flattening out; in fact, just prior to the outbreak of war it had actually reversed itself in some locations and there was a net loss of urban population. Thus, while on the one hand the area made available for city residential development was multiplied by ten, the tide of population increase in cities slackened, and in some cases actually began to ebb.

It was quite natural that as automobiles were perfected and reduced in price a steady drift of people set in from other residential areas into the wide belt of surrounding undeveloped and relatively low cost land. Even for those who continued to live in the older sections of cities, the convenience and attractiveness of the automobile led to its increased use by more and more people for more and more travel purposes. In fact, this very convenience of the new mode of transportation in itself stimulated the volume of travel.

So, the decentralizing process started. At the same time rapidly spreading ownership and increased use of automobiles, filled to capacity the whole street system of the community. Streets originally laid out for horse drawn vehicles were soon choked and jammed with the vehicles of the people who continued to live in cities and of those who, having moved to the suburbs, used their cars to get about. Sir Raymond Unwin expresses the resulting situation succinctly when he says "The people have been going out from the city to live to such an extent that now they can hardly get into the city to work."

Although the automobile started and stimulated the decentralization of urban areas, the travel needs of families are not limited to the trips of the breadwinner back and forth to work. Where there is more than one worker in a family, and where the needs of shopping, school and recreation cannot be met by ownership of a single car, the demand soon arises for the extension of public travel facilities into newly developed outlying areas. Dut to low population density the operation of such facilities is frequently quite uneconomic but is forced nevertheless by public pressure. With the introduction of buses more of such extensions became feasible than was formerly the case and this in turn has contributed further to the growing decentralization.

To remedy intolerable traffic conditions and to eliminate bottlenecks, many street widening projects were undertaken. These and other streets were designated as main traffic arteries. Signal systems were introduced and other advisable measures adopted in a losing struggle to permit the inherent advantages of the speed, flexibility and comfort of the automobile to be utilized. In our efforts to meet the situation which overwhelmed us, we cut ruthlessly through the hearts of formerly quiet residential areas, or even more or less self-contained communities around which cities had spread, without realizing the consequences to environment and living conditions.

Generally, we made a horrible mess of the whole situation.

If there is any doubt in anyone's mind about it, stand and reflect for a moment while watching a group of children threading their way through modern city traffic on their way to school.

Or, note the following news item released by the National Safety Council under the date line of October 29, 1943: "Motor vehicle accidents are still a greater menace to human life than war. Since Pearl Harbor a total of 21,940 Americans have been killed in battle. During the same period 46,000 persons have been killed in motor accidents. A total of 65,170, not including prisoners, have been wounded or are missing in the war, while 1,600,000 have been injured in motor accidents."

Is it any wonder that every mother and father of young children grasps the first opportunity of a home in the suburbs where they hope they may escape the hazards of city traffic to their children, and its noise and other nuisances to themselves!

They are merely running away from the mistakes which have been made in our efforts to deal with the problems brought about by the widespread use of automobiles. What they seek is rather simple-a proper environment in which to live and in which to raise a family. Unfortunately, without proper planning and control of development, this does not always materialize even in the outskirts. Many developments on the edges of cities in the United States have sprung up and grown without proper fire and police protection-to say nothing of schools and the opportunity for healthy social and civic contact. There are slums of jerry built houses and shacks on the outskirts of cities just as there are of tenements near their centres.

In the effort to avoid imposing too much upon your patience, I have obviously over-simplified the problem. There are other factors involved in this migration from older city areas. Buildings and old neighborhoods become obsolete and run down. Inlying property continues to be valued at high prices by its owners in the hope that some shift in the direction of development or the influence of a new public improvement may bail out their investment or their expectations. This leaves no alternative but to locate in the outskirts, residential communities that will appeal to young families seeking desirable environment and home ownership.

But the fact remains that the way in which we have dealt with our local transportation problem-or perhaps more accurately expressed, failed to deal with it-is of much greater significance than has been generally recognized. And, though I do not profess to be an authority on the whole field of community planning I have yet to find any aspect of the problem which a sound system of local taxation and adequate zoning laws would not go a long way toward solving.

Modern city planners seem to be tending more and more toward agreement on the general idea which is strikingly portrayed in the London County Council Plan. This contemplates the replanning of metropolitan areas on a different concept than merely a central business and industrial core, with a constantly extending, more or less formless, residential area built up on a radiating or grid pattern of streets. Instead, modern planners visualize a business district of limited extent, surrounded by a group of more or less self-contained satellite neighbourhoods or communities, each having its own local schools, churches and shopping areas. Such sub-communities as formerly existed, instead of being permitted to grow together into the formless and conglomerate mass of the typical metropolitan area of today, are to be split apart and restored as far as possible to their former self-contained status, including even such industry as circumstances seem to make advisable. All through-traffic is to be diverted around such restored sub-communities or neighborhoods, and they are also to be protected from other encroachments.

There is great encouragement in the growth of this concept of modern city redevelopment. Note that there is ample area available to house the population of even the largest city, at reasonable standards of density and at reasonable distances for ready accessibility to the heart of the area. But by no stretch of the imagination is there either enough space or enough resources to provide the facilities needed if the planning is to be done on the assumption that everyone will move about in private, vehicles.

If there is to be any progress in the re-planning of tomorrow's cities so that disintegration will not set in at a faster rate than ever, immediately the present restrictions on building are removed, we must understand this local transportation problem and face it squarely. There seems to be little difficulty about enlisting general understanding of the importance of swift, convenient and safe transportation as such. But that vision of a long, slim, luxurious automobile on a futuristic highway continues to haunt the minds' eyes of many people.

Accordingly, elaborate plans for the construction of great "superhighways" or "arterials" or "limited ways" in urban areas are being prepared, and are being advocated on the ground that they will give access to the centres of cities and will thus help to maintain property values and to remedy congestion and blight. In contrast, proposals for the improvement of public transit facilities by street cars, trolley coaches, buses or special rapid transit lines seem rather prosaic. Even the suggestion that plans for major urban highway projects should not be settled without taking into full consideration the possibility of designing the structure so as to make it as useful as possible to those who ride in public vehicles as well as private vehicles, does not always meet with favor from highway engineers.

The war has brought home in a very striking way, the importance of the function which is performed by the street cars, busses, trolley coaches and rapid transit lines all over America. Despite the great curtailment in the use of automobiles resulting from the cessation of construction and the necessity of conserving gasoline, tires and parts, the existing public carriers-unable to obtain new vehicles except to a very limited extent-have nevertheless been able to step into the breach.

Public vehicles are of course crowded and in some instances even uncomfortably so. But it is worthy of note that with little increased equipment they are this year carrying a traffic load double that of the depression year of 1933. In the United States alone, these carriers will in the current year transport a total of 22 billion passengers--and the carriers in Canada considerably over an additional billion. This is more than the equivalent of transporting every man, woman and child of every town of 25,000 population and above once every day of the year.

Visualize then the problem before us if we endeavour to provide facilities in cities so that this local travel may ultimately all move in individual vehicles.

It will help in understanding this situation if I give you just a few figures as to relative capacities. At the normal standard of loading of automobiles in city traffic in the United States--which is quite uniform for all cities throughoutout the country--the maximum number of people that can be carried by a lane of automobiles operating on the most modern type of grade separated, superhighway, is about 2,600 people per hour past any given point. In comparison, a lane of buses operating on an ordinary city street, subject to crossing interference, has a capacity at moderate standards of loading, of about 9,000 passengers per hour. A lane of street cars under the same conditions raises the figure to 13,500 people per hour, and the same cars in a subway, or other right of way where they are free from cross traffic interference, will transport on a conservative basis, 20,000 people per hour. A single subway track with trains of multiple car units operating in local service, has a capacity of 40,000 passengers per hour; and when the trains are run express, as in the subways of New York, they can transport about 60,000 passengers per hour at much lower standards of loading than have been prevalent there for many years.

Here then is a direct comparison. A lane of buses on an ordinary city street has a passenger capacity about 3y2 times that of a lane of automobiles on an elevated highway. The capacity of a lane of street cars on a city street is about five times that of a lane of automobiles on an elevated highway. If the street cars are put into a subway or a reserved strip on an express highway, their capacity becomes 7/ times that of a lane of autos on the same highway; and a single lane of express subway trains raises the figure to more than twenty times the capacity of the lane of automobiles.

Even this doesn't quite give the full picture. Careful study of the building cubage occupied by the workers in central area business buildings, and of the space required to store automobiles in the most modern types of ramp or elevator garages, indicates that it takes just about the same amount of space per person transported, to store automobiles, as it does per employee to conduct the business which is done in the central area of the average city were to ride to work in automobiles, it would require as much cubage in building space to store their cars as is now occupied by the workers themselves. That is to say the building cubage required to carry on present business would need to be doubled. But please note that this takes care only of the cars of employees. It makes no provision for the storage of the cars of those who must come into these areas to do business.

I hope that I have not given the impression, by what I have said, that I oppose the development of such major highway improvements as are needed in the environs and within modern cities, to eliminate traffic bottlenecks and to provide for urban populations ready access to the countryside. Such parkways, waterways border drives and vehicular tunnels as we have developed in and adjoining the metropolitan area of New York, for example, are a great civic asset and are necessary in this motor age, to the well being of the people of such a great metropolitan area. Similar facilities should be built by every major community to the extent that they can be paid for by the people who are to benefit from them.

But the relatively minor function which this whole elaborate system of traffic arteries in and around New York plays in the maintenance of rhythmic beat of the myriad activities constituting the economic and social life of that great metropolis, was strikingly demonstrated by a recent experience. When, during the emergency in gasoline supplies last summer, which affected the New York area, driving was radically curtailed and all pleasure use of automobiles prohibited, the number of automobiles on the streets of Manhattan was suddenly reduced to something less than one-half of what it had been. But the additional load which was in consequence thrown on the public transit lines into and within Manhattan, was almost imperceptible.

And so I say, there is danger in our planning for tomorrow's cities, of getting the cart before the horse; of providing the highways to give city dwellers access to the countryside before we provide the internal transportation systems essential to the very survival of the communities themselves. Unless this is recognized there is danger that in our planning we may find that we have merely destroyed our cities as we know them today and have distributed their populations helter skelter over the surrounding countryside. In such an eventuality it is hard to visualize how any community can possibly carry the staggering tax burden of providing over the area involved, necessary municipal facilities and services of a modern urban community.

There is considerable reason to believe that in the two cities of the United States where automobile use has reached its maximum intensity--namely Los Angeles and Detroit--the process of community disintegration has already proceeded so far that it will be very difficult to reverse the trend. And like the man who tried more of the hair of the dog that bit him, these two cities seem to have already developed the greatest super-duper postwar highway plans that have so far been proposed in our country.