Traffic and Transit, Growth Management and the Four Goals of the Master Plan

This traffic and transportation study is one of three foundations for the larger Growth Management Study which describes the interaction of three sets of issues:

Economic growth – how much new employment and population growth there may be over the next twenty years.
Urban design – where should Stamford grow and what should new development look like.
Traffic and transit – how will residents and workers/employees travel to, and around Stamford.

In order to understand the consequences of growth, the Growth Management Study modeled three futures – slow, trend and high growth and for each of these possible futures, policy recommendations are made. The Growth Management model validated what policymakers suspected initially – that population growth and transportation issues are the biggest constraints on Stamford’s prosperity. Quite simply, an ever-widening gap between employment and population translates into the need to bring more workers into Stamford, commuting from distances that are farther and farther away. This is a trend that in the long-term cannot be sustained.

As summarized below, and described in detail elsewhere in this report, the Traffic and Transit study shows that it is possible to manage future traffic problems even if Stamford continues to grow as it has over the past decade, but only by deploying an aggressive mix of strategies that includes cooperation by employers, more transit and, most importantly, strategic land use decisions: Stamford cannot build its way out of its traffic and transit problems by widening roads and reconfiguring intersections without destroying the Quality of Life of the Neighborhoods. New housing and new commercial and industrial developments must be in locations and in configurations that support transit.

It is this last strategy - land use – that links the Traffic and Transit study to the other Goals and Objectives of the Master Plan. The design guidelines in the Urban Design Report, and summarized in the City Beautiful section of the City-wide Policies Report, assure that new development is contextual and reinforces the neighborhoods. The design studies in the Downtown section of the Action Plan demonstrate that the completion of downtown will not only protect the neighborhoods from unwanted intensification, but will put development where it is accessible to transit.

SUMMARY OF KEY FINDINGS

The Growth Management model quantified the dimensions of the growing population-employment gap and established some concrete traffic and Transit benchmarks and goals. Most of the detailed Traffic and Transit recommendations in this report are summarized in the Neighborhood Quality of Life and Downtown sections of the Action Plan. Below is a summary of some of the more important findings.

Future housing must be predominantly in the downtown, proximate to transit and to employment centers, to ameliorate traffic problems related to future growth. In the initial modeling, future housing growth was assumed to be distributed throughout the city. This had the desired effect of reducing traffic at key gateways into the city, but the perverse effect of making local neighborhood traffic worse! Only by putting 80% of future housing growth in the “greater downtown” (including Mill River, Bedford/Summer Streets & South End), were the beneficial impacts realized. The balance of the housing growth would be for neighborhood revitalization efforts outside of downtown.
Traffic problems in Stamford will get worse and will need to be addressed even if Stamford grows slowly over the next 20 years. In relative terms, the costs to maintain existing levels of service even under a “slow growth” scenario, will almost double. Stamford will also continue to be impacted by worsening conditions on Interstate 95 (I-95) and the Merritt Parkway as a result of the regional growth pattern. I-95 has limited right-of-way for any future capacity improvements. The Merritt Parkway is designated as a scenic parkway, and no capacity improvements are scheduled. It is also true however, that in a low growth scenario, it is possible to mitigate traffic impacts with the least ambitious measures and those that are all within Stamford’s local control – “traffic demand management” (TDM – defined later) and some strategic land-use decisions for directing development to downtown.
It is possible to mitigate traffic impacts of even the most ambitious growth scenarios. If a combination of measures is employed – TDM, more transit and more housing – it is possible to hold the relative increase in the costs for mitigation to the same level as that for Stamford’s most likely future, that of trend levels of growth. In fact, in the most optimistic set of events, it is possible to reduce the growth in traffic entering Stamford from the two major highways to levels lower than existing conditions today! However, this is only possible by deploying the most aggressive mix of mitigation strategies – assuming extraordinary will on the part of policymakers with regards to land-use decisions; almost complete cooperation by employers on TDM; and the partnership of state and regional entities to address transit issues and regional highway issues. Put simply, there is a direct relationship between levels of growth and the political, economic and technical effort required to mitigate traffic.
There is no magic bullet. As the analysis demonstrates (see Figures 2 and 3), the only way to make significant inroads into Stamford’s traffic challenges is by combining various measures. No one set of strategies works. From a policy perspective, this both adds to the complexity of the challenge and increases the opportunities for action. Stamford should be prepared to move on all fronts simultaneously – to promote and take advantage of whatever opportunities present themselves in any of the three possible futures described in the Economic Development study – whether it is persuading a major employer to implement flex time or lobbying ConnDOT for more reverse service trains

Leveraging Regional Cooperation

The future growth of Stamford and the associated traffic and transit issues need to be addressed in a regional context. Stamford’s willingness to envision anything more than slow growth must be accompanied by the acknowledgement of Stamford’s strategic role in the Fairfield County and regional economies. Stamford must leverage its willingness to undertake the mitigation measures that Stamford controls locally – TDM and land-use related actions – into cooperation by other entities to address issues beyond Stamford’s local control – such as regional transit improvements. This is especially true in regards to the regional highway network, where Stamford’s local efforts can have a significant impact on the Merritt Parkway and I-95 problems for the rest of the region. The Policy matrix at the back of this report summarizes the kinds of actions that need to be taken in terms of degrees of difficulty and implementation responsibilities.

Methodology

To describe how traffic will be affected by different levels of growth in Stamford, and to describe how these effects can be mitigated, a three step process is used: first, the future traffic volumes created in each employment scenario are estimated at key auto entryways and representative intersections in Stamford. Second, the cost of making intersection improvements to handle the additional traffic volumes is estimated. Finally, the impact of various measures to reduce traffic volumes, and thus to reduce the costs of intersection improvements, is estimated.

Mitigation Strategies

Three kinds of mitigation measures are described: transportation demand management, transit improvements and more housing for workers in Stamford. Once these intersection costs were estimated the exercise was repeated for various packages of mitigation measures designed to reduce the volume of traffic. These measures fall into three categories including transportation demand management (TDM), transit improvements, and housing shifts for Stamford workers. TDM measures are actions that would induce single-occupant auto travelers to travel in the offpeak, share a ride, or not make the trip at all. TDM measures were further subdivided into measures that are:

a) primarily the province of employers including:

flextime and other alternative work schedule measures such as four-day work weeks or staggered hours;
telecommuting;
guaranteed ride home programs to give those who use transit or carpool an option if they must go home in an emergency or work late;
carpool and vanpooling matching; and
commuter choice programs which involve tax-incentive subsidies for using transit.

It is assumed that a reasonable employer participation in these programs could reduce peak hour single-occupant driving by 10 percent.

b) more aggressive measures that require either significant land use changes or other public policies “outside the box“. These include:

lower maximum or mandated lower parking ratios to discourage single-occupant driving;
lower parking ratio requirements near train stations and higher floor area ratios near transit stations to encourage transit use where it is most attractive;
cashing out of free parking to give those who don’t drive a subsidy equivalent to the free parking subsidy for those that do;
transfer of development rights to lower development away from transit and increase development near transit; and
location efficient mortgages to encourage households to buy in areas near transit.

For the purpose of the traffic intersection cost analysis, it was assumed that these policies would lower single-occupant driving by 20 percent. Most of these measures can be implemented through changes in zoning or land use ordinances that could be part of the Master Plan. Transit improvements account for the second strategy that could reduce peak hour traffic. These include both bus and rail actions that would lower fares, increase the frequency of service and expand it to earlier in the morning or later in the evening, adequate parking at the boarding points, more timely connections between train and bus service, easier walking environments on the approaches to stops, and finally, greater amenity at stations and stops, including seating, shelter from the elements, more complete transit information, and better lighting. Specific actions include:

lower reverse rail fares from New York and for intra-Connecticut travel;
more peak period service in the peak and in the “shoulders of the peak, especially in the evening after 6 pm;
added and better timed feeder service to and from the Stamford station;2 and
added parking at stations north and east of Stamford.

The impact of more housing in Stamford for Stamford workers was also examined. The logic is simple. If more of Stamford’s workers do not have to travel long distances, then they will occupy less road space. And if they can be located in places where they are more likely to use transit or walk to work, then traffic volumes would be lower. To estimate the amount of potential additional housing, build-out of major redevelopment projects such as Mill River, Dock Street, Northeast Utilities, and Yale & Towne were assumed. To that was added the potential housing from proposed housing projects, soft sites and in-fill in and around the downtown, and redevelopment of several large industrial sites outside downtown. Taken together, these yielded a potential for 8,000 dwelling units.

Added to this was the approximate level of in-fill growth in the last 13 years of 2,000 units, giving a total of 10,000 possible new units, which is consistent with the projections for the high growth scenario (see Urban Design and Economic Development Reports for “build-out” estimates). The likely impacts of each of these three mitigation strategies – TDM, transit, and housing – on the cost of intersection improvements for each of the three growth scenarios were made. These impacts were tested acting alone and in concert with one another, since there is no reason to select one category to the exclusion of the other two. The results are described in the Key Findings section. A fuller explanation of the traffic estimating procedures is presented as Appendix A.