A study of Philadelphia subway stations' TOD potential by Xinlin Huang

Transit Oriented Development Potential Study of Philadelphia

University of Pennsylvania,School of Design

GIS503 Final Project Fall 2011 Xinlin Huang

Rung-Er Jang

Lu Yao

I. Introduction & Intend `

Transit Oriented Development (TOD) promotes dense, walkable and mix-used communities around the transit nodes. Compared to the low-density suburban sprawls in US cities, TOD provides a life style choice that involves more walking, biking and human contact, with higher energy efficiency and embraces the diverse and vibrant nature of urban living. Under the pressing global warming issue and ever- increasing petrol price, TOD has been included by many Ameri-

can cities as the solution towards those problems. And because of the recently- increased popularity of urban life styles among young Americans, TOD has been adopted by many real-estate developers as the market’s demand. Our study aims at evaluating the TOD potential for Philadelphia’s major transit nodes areas, and identifying the most eligible stations for future TOD. Philadelphia is a city with a successful public transit system. The city has a relatively stable source

SEPTA provides subway, light rail and bus service for the city. Source: www.septa.org

of public transit riders and sound transit infrastructures. The current public transit system of the city consists of subway, regional rails, light rails, buses, inter-urban high speed lines. Among the city’s many transit nodes, we select subway stations as the subject of our study. We believe the subway stations have the ability to generate passenger traffic that enables condensed economic and social activities and support a successful TOD.

Philadelphia’s Public Transit System Source: www.septa.org

The city’s subway line has high capacity, high speed and a large service area. According the SPETA ( South-eastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority)’s Operating Facts Report Fiscal Year 2011, the ridership of the city’s subway system is 63,177,000 passenger miles, which is the second largest running after bus and light rail system’s 106,516,600 passenger miles. However, the city has

52 subway stations but 8,074 bus/ light rail stations. Therefore the actual passenger attraction of subway stations is stronger than bus/light rail stations. Besides, the subway station areas very often are where the buses and light rail stations clustered, which means subway stations areas actually generate more passenger than subway stations.

Transit Oriented Development Potential Study of Philadelphia

University of Pennsylvania,School of Design

GIS503 Final Project Fall 2011 Xinlin Huang

II. Methodology

Subway Line and Station

Step One : Create TOD Study Zone

Lu Yao

Study Zone: Subway Station Buffer 400 Meters

Fern Rock Trans. Center Olney!

The city’s subway system consists of two subway lines: the MarketFrankford Line (Blue Line) and the Broad Street Line (Orange Line). The Blue Line runs from the east to the west end of the city, and the Orange Line connects the city from north to south. Subway stations are the “anchors” of this TOD potential study. The spaces around a subway stations are the study zones and the basic analysis units for this project. Each study zone is created by drawing a 400-meter buffer around subway station using ArcGIS. The 400-meter radius is decided basing on 10-minutes walking distance, which is the estimated commercial catchment area of a subway station.

Step Two : Select Criteria

Rung-Er Jang

! ! !

Fern Rock Trans. Center Olney!

Logan

Wyoming

Frankford Terminal

Margaret/Orthodox

Hunting Park

Church

Tioga

Cecil B. Moore

Girard

Fairmount

Race-Vine

Girard

Spring Garden

Fairmount

Chinatown

Millbourne

Berks

Girard

Spring Garden

63rd60th

! 56th 52nd !69th St.!Terminal ! 46th ! 40th 34th ! ! 30th ! ! !

Race-Vine

Spring Garden

Chinatown

15th13th! !! ! ! !8th 5th 2nd ! ! City Hall11th ! Walnut-LocustLombard-South

Ellsworth-Federal

! !

Cecil B. Moore

15th13th! !! ! ! !8th 5th 2nd ! ! City Hall11th ! Walnut-LocustLombard-South

An ideal TOD site should be a destination, or is composed of many small destinations. And this is affected by the character of the study zones. The essences of TOD are dense population, vibrant economy, mixed land use pattern, walkable streets and a stable source of transit riders. In this project, we try to break these qualities into measurable social-economic criteria: population density, employment, income, house value, rent, current land use, walkability, and resident’s journey to work. We collected numeric data for most of the criteria above, and process and analysis them in ArcGIS. The detail of each criterion will be explained in following paragraphs.

Somerset ! Huntingdon Susquehanna-DauphinYork-Dauphin !

Berks

Spring Garden

Millbourne

Allegheny

North Philadelphia

! 63rd60th 56th 52nd !69th St.!Terminal ! 46th ! 40th 34th ! ! 30th ! ! !

Tioga

Girard

Alleghney

Erie/Torresdale

Somerset ! Huntingdon Susquehanna-DauphinYork-Dauphin !

Church

Erie

Allegheny

North Philadelphia

Alleghney

Margaret/Orthodox

Hunting Park

Erie/Torresdale

Frankford Terminal

Erie

Logan

Wyoming

Tasker-Morris

Ellsworth-Federal

Snyder

Tasker-Morris

Snyder

Oregon

Pattison

Legend !

0 0.5

Miles 4

Legend

Pattison

SEPTA Subway Station

SEPTA-Market Frankford Line

SEPTA-Broad Street Line

Regional Rail Lines

Regional Rail Lines Fairmount Park

Fairmount Park Hydrology

0 0.5

Miles 4

Hydrology Subway Station Buffer

Transit Oriented Development Potential Study of Philadelphia

University of Pennsylvania,School of Design

GIS503 Final Project Fall 2011 Xinlin Huang

Step Three : Collect Data, Analysis in ArcGIS The demographic data and “resident’s journey to work” data we obtained are at census tract level, and the land use data is at property parcel level. The numeric data comes from 2005-2009 American Community Survey(ACS), and spatial data comes from Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access (PASDA). These data were joined in to their spatial units using ArcGIS. The shapefiles generated in this step are later intersected with the 400-meter study zones, which are also drawn with ArcGIS. The next step is to rearrange the fragmented shapes and data into study zone by the “summarize” function of ArcGIS. The summarized data was exported into new shapefiles which are based on study zone units. At the end of this step, each study zone will has its own criteria set ready for next step’s analysis. The following maps and paragraphs are showing the detail information for each criterion and the state of study zones in each criterion.

Create TOD Study Zone

Select Criteria

Population Density, Employment, Income, House Value, Rent

Result & Conclusion

Lu Yao

Select transit lines and stations Create buffers as TOD study zones

Density & Prosperity:

Collect Data, Analysis in ArcGIS

Rung-Er Jang

TOD-supportive Environment:

Land Use & Walkability

Source of Ridership: Residents’ Journyto work

Create Criteria Set for Each Study Zone Assign Weights to different Criteria

Arrange TOD zones into 5 grades according to their final score, and map with different color Critique of Methodology

Transit Oriented Development Potential Study of Philadelphia

University of Pennsylvania,School of Design

GIS503 Final Project Fall 2011 Xinlin Huang

Fern Rock Trans. Center

Olney

Church

Erie Alleghney

Susquehanna-Dauphin

Somerset Huntngdon� York-Dauphin

Cecil B. Moore Girard

56th 52nd

46th

40th

Race-Vine

34th 30th

Susquehanna-Dauphin

Girard Spring Garden

Chinatown

15th 13th 8th 5th 2nd 11th City Hall Walnut-LocustLombard-South

Population Ddensity Population Density Criteria from Low to High Subway Station Buffer

69th St. Terminal

63rd 60th

56th 52nd

Spring Garden 46th

40th

Race-Vine

34th 30th

4 5

56th 52nd

Spring Garden 46th

40th

Ellsworth-Federal Tasker-Morris

North Philadelphia

Cecil B. Moore

Subway Station Buffer 1 2

Snyder

Oregon

4 5

Patson��

Data Source: 2005-2009 American Community Survey

Millbourne

63rd 60th

56th 52nd

Spring Garden 46th

40th

Spring Garden

Race-Vine Chinatown 15th 13th 8th 5th 2nd Walnut-Locust11th Lombard-SouthCity Hall

34th 30th

Ellsworth-Federal Tasker-Morris

Berks

Girard

Fairmount 69th St. Terminal

Allegheny

Somerset Huntngdon� York-Dauphin

Girard

Median House Value House Value Criteria from Low to High

Median Rent Rent Criteria from Low to High Subway Station Buffer 1 2

Snyder

Oregon

4 5

Patson��

Density and Prosperity

Erie/Torresdale Tioga

Susquehanna-Dauphin

Girard

Church

Erie

Berks

Spring Garden

Race-Vine Chinatown 15th 13th 8th 5th 2nd Walnut-Locust11th Lombard-SouthCity Hall

34th 30th

Frankford Terminal Margaret/Orthodox

Alleghney

Allegheny

Fern Rock Trans. Center

Huntng Par k�

Somerset Huntngdon� York-Dauphin

Fairmount 63rd 60th

Ellsworth-Federal Tasker-Morris

Patson��

Wyoming

Erie/Torresdale

Cecil B. Moore

15th 13th 8th 5th 2nd Walnut-Locust11th Lombard-SouthCity Hall

Median Family Income Income Criteria from High SubwayLow Station to Buffer

Patson��

Tioga

Girard

Spring Garden

Chinatown

Oregon

Margaret/Orthodox

North Philadelphia

Race-Vine

Church

Susquehanna-Dauphin

34th 30th

Oregon

Logan

Erie

40th

Frankford Terminal

Alleghney

46th

Snyder

Olney

Huntng Par k�

56th 52nd

Logan

Millbourne

63rd 60th

Snyder

Fern Rock Trans. Center

Wyoming

69th St. Terminal

Spring Garden

Patson��

Olney

Empolyment Rate Employment Criteria from High SubwayLow Stationto Buffer

Tasker-Morris

Oregon

Chinatown

Millbourne

Berks

Girard

Fairmount

Ellsworth-Federal

Tasker-Morris Snyder

Cecil B. Moore

Spring Garden

Allegheny

Somerset Huntngdon� York-Dauphin

Girard

15th 13th 8th 5th 2nd Walnut-Locust11th Lombard-SouthCity Hall

Ellsworth-Federal

Tioga

Susquehanna-Dauphin

Girard

Fairmount Millbourne

Alleghney

Berks

Cecil B. Moore

Berks

Erie/Torresdale

North Philadelphia

Somerset Huntngdon� York-Dauphin

Girard

Fairmount 63rd 60th

Tioga Allegheny

North Philadelphia

Church

Erie

Erie/Torresdale

Alleghney

Tioga

Frankford Terminal Margaret/Orthodox

Huntng Par k�

Church

Erie

Allegheny

Wyoming

Margaret/Orthodox

Erie/Torresdale

North Philadelphia

69th St. Terminal

Frankford Terminal

Huntng Par k�

Margaret/Orthodox

Huntng Par k�

Logan

Wyoming

Frankford Terminal

Lu Yao

Fern Rock Trans. Center

Olney

Logan

Spring Garden

Fern Rock Trans. Center

Olney

Wyoming

Millbourne

Rung-Er Jang

High density indicates possible intensive economic and social activities. High value of employment and family income indicates high level of economic prosperity. High house value and gross rent indicates the desirability of land and future demand for land in the study zone. The combination of the features mentioned above is the indicator of business opportunities.

Transit Oriented Development Potential Study of Philadelphia

University of Pennsylvania,School of Design

GIS503 Final Project Fall 2011 Xinlin Huang

TOD-Supportive Zoning & Walkability

Rung-Er Jang

Lu Yao

Data Source: PASDA Website http://www.pasda.psu.edu/ Olney

Fern Rock Trans. Center Fern Rock Trans. Center

Olney

Logan Wyoming

Logan

Frankford Terminal

Wyoming

Margaret/Orthodox

Huntng Par k�

Church

Erie

Erie/Torresdale

Alleghney

Church

Erie

Erie/Torresdale

Tioga Allegheny

North Philadelphia

Alleghney

Somerset

Susquehanna-Dauphin

Tioga

North Philadelphia

Huntngdon� York-Dauphin

Susquehanna-Dauphin

Cecil B. Moore

Girard

Fairmount

Existing Land Use

Millbourne

63rd 60th

56th 52nd

Spring Garden 46th

40th

Ellsworth-Federal Tasker-Morris Snyder Oregon

Patson��

Girard

69th St. Terminal

Median House Value Land Use Criteria from Low to High

Subway Station Buffer 1 2 3 4

Millbourne

63rd 60th

56th 52nd

Spring Garden 46th

40th

34th 30th

Race-Vine

Spring Garden

Chinatown

15th 13th 8th 5th 2nd Walnut-Locust11th City Hall Lombard-South Ellsworth-Federal Tasker-Morris

Berks

Girard

Fairmount

Spring Garden

Race-Vine Chinatown 15th 13th 8th 5th 2nd Walnut-Locust11th Lombard-SouthCity Hall

34th 30th

Berks

Allegheny

Somerset Huntngdon� York-Dauphin

Cecil B. Moore

Girard

69th St. Terminal

Frankford Terminal Margaret/Orthodox

Walkablity Walkability Criteria from Low to High

Subway Station Buffer 1 2

Snyder

Oregon

5 Patson��

TOD supportive-zoning are critical for TOD. Mixed use is desirable because it indicates existing TOD foundation and eliminates the potential cost of zoning change. Our general standard of scoring the land use favours residential-commercial mixed land use with a more than 25% residential proportion inside the study zone. A study zone that contains a single type of land use, such as the centre city district with only commer-

cial land, will be considered less desirable. Study zones like these might be already highly developed and are expensive to replace by other uses if a mixed land use is proposed. Study zones that contain industrial land use are also graded as less desirable. Those areas could be brown fields or current industrial use, which are less likely to become popular residential and commercial choice. Existing physical features greatly affect the potential

of TOD. An ideal TOD site should be walking-friendly. We assume that block size determines the level of walkability. By measuring the total length of streets in each study zone, we look for those with the highest value of aggregated street length which indicates smallest block size and a high level of walkability.

Transit Oriented Development Potential Study of Philadelphia

University of Pennsylvania,School of Design

GIS503 Final Project Fall 2011 Xinlin Huang

Rung-Er Jang

Fern Rock Trans. Center

Olney

Logan

Fern Rock Trans. Center

Olney

Frankford Terminal

Church

Erie

Susquehanna-Dauphin

Allegheny

56th 52nd

46th

40th

34th 30th

Race-Vine

63rd 60th

56th 52nd

Spring Garden 46th

40th

34th 30th

Race-Vine

Spring Garden

Chinatown

15th 13th 8th 5th 2nd Walnut-Locust11th Lombard-SouthCity Hall

Berks

Girard

Fairmount Spring Garden

69th St. Terminal

Millbourne

Ellsworth-Federal

Girard

63rd 60th

Girard

Fairmount

Somerset Huntngdon� York-Dauphin

Cecil B. Moore

Millbourne

Girard

Berks

Tasker-Morris

Spring Garden

Chinatown

15th 13th 8th 5th 2nd Walnut-Locust11th Lombard-SouthCity Hall

Percentage By Subway Travel byTravel Subway Criteria from Low to High

Ellsworth-Federal Tasker-Morris

Subway Station Buffer

Susquehanna-Dauphin

Travel Time to Work from Low toWork Criteria TimeTravel to High Subway Station Buffer 69th St. Terminal

1 2

Millbourne

63rd 60th

Girard

56th 52nd

46th

40th

Spring Garden

Race-Vine Chinatown 15th 13th 8th 5th 2nd Walnut-Locust11th Lombard-SouthCity Hall

34th 30th

Ellsworth-Federal Tasker-Morris

Snyder

Oregon

Berks

Girard

Fairmount

Snyder

Somerset Huntngdon� York-Dauphin

Cecil B. Moore

Spring Garden

Allegheny

Percentage of Vehebile Non-availabel Households from to VehicleLow Non-availability High Subway Station Buff 1 2 3 4 5

Patson��

2 3

Oregon

4 5

Data Source: 2005-2009 American Community Survey

Tioga

North Philadelphia

Snyder

Patson��

Erie/Torresdale

Alleghney

Allegheny

Somerset Huntngdon� York-Dauphin

Cecil B. Moore

Tioga

North Philadelphia

69th St. Terminal

Susquehanna-Dauphin

Erie/Torresdale

Alleghney

Tioga

North Philadelphia

Church

Erie

Erie/Torresdale

Alleghney

Margaret/Orthodox

Huntng Par k�

Frankford Terminal Margaret/Orthodox

Huntng Par k�

Church

Erie

Frankford Terminal

Wyoming

Margaret/Orthodox

Huntng Par k�

Wyoming

Fern Rock Trans. Center

Logan

Wyoming

Logan

Lu Yao

Resident’s Journey to Work Public transit ridership of a study zone indicates the amount of steady traffic flow and source of transit ridership. In our study we calculate the “means of travel” and “car ownership” to tell which study zones have steadier and higher public transit ridership. We also believe that a good transit system can convince car-driving population into using public transit. This idea is reflected in our selection of criteria as potential public transit ridership, which is represented by calculating travel time to work by car. The underlying notion of this criterion is that people who spend longer time to commute by car might be more willing to use public transit.

University of Pennsylvania,School of Design

Transit Oriented Development Potential Study of Philadelphia

GIS503 Final Project Fall 2011 Xinlin Huang

Rung-Er Jang

Lu Yao

Step Four : Weight Criteria After the previous processes in ArcGIS, every study zone now has its own value for each criterion. In this step, those data was exported into Excel spread sheet for our next step: weighing criteria. We do not assume that every criterion we use has the same significant in supporting a TOD zone, and this is the rationale for this weighing criteria step. Each criterion for a study zone is summarized by assigning a score range from 1 to 5. The higher the score, the higher level of potential it is. Considering the different level of importance of criteria, we weigh different criteria based on their effectiveness in promoting TOD. Because the critical features of TOD include density, walkability, mixed use and traffic, we assign population density, land use, walkability and subway

Olney Logan

Wyoming

After the weighing criteria result comes out, the score for study zones are imported to ArcGIS and joined with its spatial units – namely the study zones. Then by taking the advantage of ArcGIS’s data display function, the 52 study zones are first divided by means of quintile into 5 classes. 9 study zones with the highest scores are displayed in Red colour. Yellow, Green, light-blue represents study zones that running after the red study zones, and each of them contains 10 study zones. There are 12 study zones fall in dark-blue colour, which is the least study zones with the lowest score.

Frankford Terminal Margaret/Orthodox

Huntng Par k�

Church

Erie

Erie/Torresdale

Alleghney

Tioga

North Philadelphia Susquehanna-Dauphin

Girard Millbourne

63rd 60th

56th 52nd

Spring Garden 46th

40th

Race-Vine

Spring Garden

Chinatown 15th 13th 8th 5th 2nd Walnut-Locust11th Lombard-SouthCity Hall

34th 30th

Ellsworth-Federal Tasker-Morris

Berks

Girard

Fairmount 69th St. Terminal

Allegheny

Somerset Huntngdon� York-Dauphin

Cecil B. Moore

ridership the highest weight of 5 and each of the other criteria are weighed 1.

The overall formula of calculating the final score is: (Population Density*5)+ (Land Use*5) + (Walkability*5) + (Travel by Subway*5) + Income + Employment + Rent + House Value + Time Travel to Work + Average Percentage of Household with no Vehicle Available) / 26

Fern Rock Trans. Center

Final Score: TOD PotenCriteria Score tial From Low to High Subway Station Buffer 1.11538462 - 2.03846154 2.03846155 - 2.57692308

Snyder

2.57692309 - 2.88461538

Oregon

2.88461539 - 3.38461538 3.38461539 - 4.73076923

Patson��

University of Pennsylvania,School of Design

Transit Oriented Development Potential Study of Philadelphia

GIS503 Final Project Fall 2011 Xinlin Huang

Rung-Er Jang

Lu Yao

Girard

O !

III. Result &Conclusion Out study shows that the 9 study zones in Red colour are the station areas with the highest TOD potential in City of Philadelphia (see the chart & map on the right). We eliminated the 15 BSL station because is it overlapped with 15 MFL station. Thus our final result contains 8 study zones. Most of them are clustered around central city, and only one of them located in west Philadelphia, and one of them located on water front area. Looking at this result, we realized the methodology of this study is not perfect. The method of weighing the criteria is subjective. It is based on the assumption that these criteria are independent and the weights are properly assigned. However, some of the criteria are internally related so that they will uniformly show high value or low value in a given area, resulting in pushing up the overall score of the area. In addition, the study looks at TOD as a type of development that should be based on existing social-economic condition. However, TOD in many cases is used as a method to create development opportunities for an area. In developing countries like China, TOD is very often the initial step to urbanize an area, which means the ideal site for TOD is also dependent on a regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s overall economic development profile. In our further studies, we might adopt a new perspective to look at TOD based on more case studies on TODâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s application in various regions and countries around the world.

Girard O !

Ideal TOD Sites

O !

Fairmount

Spring Garden

O ! O !

56th

Spring Garden O !

52nd

46th

O !

Race-Vine

40th O !

34th

O !

30th

Chinatown

O !

15th 13th 8th O Hall ! 5th O11th ! ! City 2nd O O ! O ! Walnut-Locust 8th Ridge Spur

O! ! O O !

Lombard-South

O !

Legend O !

SEPTA Subway Station SEPTA-Market Frankford Line

Ellsworth-Federal

O !

SEPTA-Broad Street Line TOD_area

Tasker-Morris

Philadelphia Neighborhoods

O !

Census tract Snyder

O !

0.5

Miles

O !

Oregon