The first afternoon panel titled “Transportation and Land Development” kicked off with a discussion about the challenges and innovations in the coordination of land development and transportation and their use in the changing fiscal and economic environment in Florida.
Panelists included Tracy Crowe, principal planner with Littlejohn Engineering Associates; Martin Stone, director of Planning, Tampa-Hillsborough County Expressway Authority; and Pierce Jones, professor in Agricultural and Biological Engineering and director of the Program for Resource Efficient Communities (PREC). The goal of the panel was “to understand the big part of the connections between transportation and land use,” said Ruth Steiner, associate professor of urban and regional planning, who served as moderator.
Crowe discussed the future in Florida’s development, arguing that concurrency has been unsuccessful, largely due to the focus on only the automobile as a source of transportation and not factoring in other modes of transport, such as bicycles.
“Looking at your mobility plan is your assessment,” Steiner said. “Look at all your modes of transportations, evaluate everything you have, analyze it, determine your missing links and prioritize it.”
Crowe suggested the following links for more information: www.planning.org/research/streets/resources.htm and www.strongtowns.org.
Stone said that sustainability and transportation is about economics.
“In this country today, our transportation system is severely broken, and it’s broken economically,” Stone said. “And unfortunately, concurrency in this state has done little to stop it.”
The question to think about, Stone said, is how should we pay for transportation and who should pay?
“Our philosophy is truly about finding the right way to connect the cost of transportation to the users of transportation,” Stone said.
Jones provided examples of land use designs from Volusia County, Fla., for a gated golf course community that originally failed and compared it to more efficient designs.
Jones emphasized that “resources are clearly becoming volatile (limiting); risk increases with infrastructure burdens (roads); risk increases with increased dependence on transportation fuels; and less risky design alternatives are available.”
For a look at the panel abstract and panelist bios, click here.
