Urban and suburban design thread (Sacramento, Redwood City: cul-de-sac, 2010, transporting)

[mattinsac]

Driving to and from Folsom is faster than transit. The primary reason one would take transit is to save on parking if you work downtown. Light rail is incredibly time inefficient. That is true not just in Folsom but that would also be true in Elk Grove and Roseville. Additionally it does an poor job of actually going to places near where people actually work. In NYC the rail system is quadruple tracked so you can run high frequency express trains. But they have the density to justify that.

This region isn't dense enough to justify rail and it won't be anytime soon. Look at the general plan for the county. The "infill" here is mostly greenfield development. In most of the communities in this region there are building height caps that prevent the construction of buildings higher than 3 stories tall. Unless the neighborhood is incredibly destitute that means that it isn't profitable to rip down the existing structures to replace them with something higher density. So even though Town and Country Village might benefit from increasing the density there, economically it still doesn't pencil out without a lot of upzoning beyond what is currently allowed in the general plan.

The reason the general plans aren't being changed is that these communities generally don't have the infrastructure to build higher. They lack the fire fighting machinary to pump water that high and the trucks and ladders to rescue people from buildings that tall. The water lines and sewage systems in those existing neighborhoods generally were not set up to handle the loads from 5 to 7 story buildings, the same for the power transmission grids. In this region, its mostly near downtown where you actually have the infrastructure in place to build at these higher densities. This is why most of the "infill" development is building out largely greenfield areas of Anatolia or N. Natomas, Elk Grove or Lincoln.

General Plan Update, Planning and Community Development Department - County of Sacramento, California, USA

Rail works best in areas with large highly concentrated central business districts. But this region doesn't have that. Employment is scattered, some in downtown, some along 50, a lot out in Roseville.

Moreover, employment is going to be scattered even further. As part of the goal to get more people to work closer to where they live, they are expanding employment to places like Natomas and Elk Grove. That should result in a drop of vehicle miles traveled because employment is closer to where people live. But that means the share of employment being captured by downtown continues to drop as well.

Buses are well suited to this type of enviroment. Light rail is not as effective.

During the 70's when oil prices went up, people argued that higher gas prices would result in an urban rival as people moved closer to urban cities to reduce commutes. But that largely didn't happen. Instead, employers moved out to the burbs to take advantage of cheaper rents in suburban office parks and to have access to stronger employment pools in the burbs.

In this region, government will probably continue to locate near light rail lines, but governments share of employment continues to drop as the economy diversifies. When Intel and HP came to this region they could have opened up offices in downtown. Instead they moved out to the burbs to take advantage of cheaper rent, better employment pools and better schools for their employees.

Lastly government seems to be breaking out of downtown. The State Teachers Retirement Board is in West Sac. Franchise Tax is in Rancho Cordova. So far the major impact of light rail is to allow the GSA to freedom to move more operations out of downtown.

There is nothing particularly green about an expensive poorly utilized rail system or a poorly utilized mass transit system. The big problem with rail right now is that its fed by buses. But because commuters value there time, they try to reduce there commute times by driving to the rail stations and skipping the bus transfer. This means that the buses feeding the rail system lose passengers and are poorly occupied. When transporation cuts occur like right now, these feeder routes are the routes that are dropped. Thus the build out of light rail ultimately means less transit access, and worse enviromental performance for the entire transporation system as well as longer commute times.

There are steps the region could take that would drive people to use transit. I thought SB 517 was an excellent idea. But until this region is dramatically denser, rail is still a poor solution. We are building out a much more expensive transit system but the money we are spending is not actually building up transit usage.

Streetsblog Los Angeles » Long Beach’s State Senator Lowenthal Takes on Parking Requirements Even if this legislation doesn't pass, I think it probably is a good idea to get rid of mandatory parking requirements locally.

I am not opposed to rail everywhere. In places like West LA where traffic is bad enough where it is slowing down the buses, in that situation making a move to rail when it actually will provide a time savings to commuters. For that benefit adding rail then makes sense.

But this region isn't there yet. When we built out light rail, it didn't actually provide a time savings over the previous bus service. This is why the continued extensions of the light rail system have failed to actually increase transit usage in the area.

If this region was building neighborhoods with 90 dwelling units an acre, I would favor a massive buildout of rail. But show me where in this region that level of development could be permitted in a general plan. But right now for the money we are actually spending on rail, we could have a really good bus network that might actually push up transit usage.

[wburg]

This region isn't dense enough to justify rail and it won't be anytime soon.

BECAUSE it was designed and built as car-centric suburbs. Automobile suburbs don't magically transform into dense neighborhoods that will justify rail, they remain automobile suburbs. Rail transit corridors promote density in proximity to those corridors, but auto suburbs never get dense because there is no need to do so.

Lastly government seems to be breaking out of downtown. The State Teachers Retirement Board is in West Sac.

...from their previous location off of Folsom Blvd. near Howe/Power Inn. The new building in West Sacramento is MUCH closer to downtown. There was a push to move state offices into the suburbs 20-30 years ago, but recent efforts like the East End (and the long-deferred West End) projects are all focused around moving state government offices back to downtown Sacramento.

There is nothing particularly green about an expensive poorly utilized rail system or a poorly utilized mass transit system.

Or a poorly utilized, well, just about everything. The point is to utilize them well, which generally means funding them properly instead of starving them to death, which is why Sacramento's transit system is poorly utilized.

If this region was building neighborhoods with 90 dwelling units an acre, I would favor a massive buildout of rail. But show me where in this region that level of development could be permitted in a general plan.

http://www.cityofsacramento.org/dsd/...dUse_11x17.pdf
I'd debate whether 90 dua is the minimum needed for transit-oriented development: most TOD advocates consider 50-60 dua to be closer to the "sweet spot" needed to encourage transit use. But on the above city general plan map, you will note neighborhoods with maximum DUA of 150, 250 and even 450: downtown, Richards, the Docks, the Railyards, R Street, Swanston, Folsom/65th, Stockton/Broadway, even Natomas between Arena and Del Paso. Some areas on the map are kind of deceptive too: there are parts of Midtown that are currently 50-100 dua, and despite the downzoning indicated on the map, parcels in the central city that currently have higher dua units are entitled to maintain the current density even if the building is replaced with a newer building. Plus, many city business corridors have max DUA of 80-110.

There are also TOD units being built or already constructed at Alhambra & S and elsewhere on the R Street corridor, with more planned, in the 50-60+ dua range. Admittedly I wouldn't mind seeing some of the neighborhoods currently listed as "traditional neighborhood low" max 7 dua get quite a bit denser--many of them already look like Midtown (and used to be transit-oriented neighborhoods in their own right back when we had streetcars & interurbans) but seem to be downzoned for political reasons.

[Majin]

Broader question, why even have things like max DUA, height limits, and parking minimums? If you're serious about urban infill and fighting sprawl none of these should exist. If a developer wants to build a 50 story skyscraper in midtown with no parking and there is economic incentive to do so, what would be the purpose of derailing it if it meets the regions goals of densifying?

[wburg]

Originally Posted by Majin

Broader question, why even have things like max DUA, height limits, and parking minimums? If you're serious about urban infill and fighting sprawl none of these should exist. If a developer wants to build a 50 story skyscraper in midtown with no parking and there is economic incentive to do so, what would be the purpose of derailing it if it meets the regions goals of densifying?

Density isn't the only thing worth considering when planning a city. Cities are basically big, very complex machines, and like any other complex machine, there has to be some sense of organization to a city. That's why general plans are created: to organize a city in ways that make sense. You wouldn't design a car with the fuel tank on the front bumper just because it was simpler to put it there next to the engine, or skip putting in car seats because it's cheaper to do it that way. To run properly, and make a city more useful (which means making it liveable) cities need plans.

Zoning is an outgrowth of the general plan process. Zoning codes are intended to keep a city liveable. If a city is chaotic and unplanned, people won't move there no matter how dense you build, because the place is a mess and living there is difficult. On the other hand, if you separate uses too far from each other, you get sprawl. The secret is finding an acceptable middle ground.

Economic incentive doesn't just apply to the person building a project, but also to the rest of the community around it. A 50 story skyscraper with no parking in the middle of Midtown would have many problems. It would certainly have a negative effect on surrounding neighborhoods, which would lower property values around it. It would outstrip the capacity of sewers, water supplies and streets. If it was residential and not near good transit, people living there would have to park their cars on the street, which would be a hassle for both the residents and the neighbors. The end result is that the project would be less desirable for tenants and for neighbors. The end result would be a boondoggle that loses money for the developer, is unattractive to buyers and irritates the neighbors.

There are ways to increase density and reduce parking minimums with fewer effects. Siting close to transit is a good way to reduce the need for parking without impacting street parking. Building variable sizes of units can increase density while making some units more affordable but still giving consumers a variety of choices. Setbacks, landscaping and good architecture can make a larger building easier to fit in a smaller-scaled neighborhood. A good general plan can call for these things and provide options for developers and residents by making it EASIER to build certain types of buildings in certain areas. By checking the land-use map, a developer can have a much clearer idea right up front how well a particualr use will suit a particular area. That can save a lot of money and time in the development process, vs. plopping an incompatible use somewhere and having to deal with the resulting incompatibilities, opposition and reduced marketability of the project.

[mattinsac]

Wburg

Originally Posted by mattinsac

In this region, its mostly near downtown where you actually have the infrastructure in place to build at these higher densities.

I have always acknowledged that downtown is one of the few areas where its possible to actually build at higher densities. But along the Gold Line, in Folsom, Rancho Cordova and even outside of downtown its not actually permissible even under the proposed 2030 revisions of the general plans for the respective communities to actually propose buildings that have 90 du an acre along the line in these areas. Which raises the question of why did we spend all this money building a light rail line through these areas when it does not now nor will it any time in the foreseeable future to have the density to actually support the rail line?

Since 1987, we have continued to build more rail lines in this area with the promise of light rail actually raising the percentage of people actually using mass transit to get to work. Yet according to the census bureau, the share of commuting on mass transit is lower today than in 1980 before we started building out the light rail system. According to the census bureau in 1980 4.1% of the population in Sacramento County used transit to get to work. In 1990, it was 2.8%, in 2000 it was 3.1% and in the most recent survey it was 2.9%.

Because of the county wide increase on the sale tax to fund mass transit we are spending more on transit today than we did before we started building light rail, and more than we spent in 1980 but transit's share of the commute is still below the 1980 level. At the federal level, transits share of budget is up and the freeways share is down.

This is why I don't see it as purely an inadequate funding issue, but instead a poor use of funds issue. When we are spending more and getting less, that is a problem.

Because we are building out light rail corridors in areas that aren't actually dense enough to support them and in areas where they won't anytime in the foreseeable future be dense enough to support them, adding more rail is inconviencing the customer base of the transit system more than its actually benefiting it. If the policy was working the share of people commuting via transit should be going up. That is the metric that counts. The fact that its not means the policy isn't working.

Majin-
Not all areas are equally capable of providing support services for really tall buildings. In midtown, you might be close enough to the downtown firetrucks that could be called to address a fire in a 35 story building, but if you were to build a skyscraper in say Isleton, you might not have firetrucks in the region with adequate equipment to put out the fire. If the firetrucks don't have pumps capable of providing enough water pressure to reach the higher levels of the building that is another problem. If the fire department doesn't have a helicopter, lifts or ladders tall enough to evacuate people from such a building, again that is another problem. If the fire department doesn't have a large enough staff to fight a fire in a building that tall again its a big problem.

There is also infrastructure issues. Really big buildings use lots of water and power and put out a lot sewage. To support a skyscrapper in Isleton, you would need to upgrade the infrastructure dramatically to adequately provide those types of service to the building. These buildings also have the potential to create really big traffic impacts. The reason you need zoning here is to ensure that in the areas you are going to stick these really tall buildings, you have the infrastructure in place to support them.

But there are also nimby reasons to prevent really tall buildings. If a developer was allowed to build 30 story building at 30th and J street. That would dramatically increase the value of the land under the Safeway at Alhambra and J street. That probably would mean the end to that Safeway. A lot of the local neighborhood services in that neighborhood would be under pressure from the same forces. A few skyscrapers would threaten most of the historic homes in midtown. Midtown is well served by light rail and has excellent freeway connections. Outside of zoning regulations and neighborhood activists there are few things that is keep the area right now out of the path of high rise development. There are no natural barriers and midtown is close enough to downtown where the cost of extending infrastructure to support high rises in that neighborhood wouldn't be that expensive or its already there. Its may be close enough to share the same firefighting equipment etc.

In SF the only thing that kept the North Beach and Chinatown from turning into an extension of the financial district was the organizational efforts of the local residents. They were the ones who were pushing for new office development to go to SOMA instead. Assuming downtown does ultimately at some point start building a significant agglomeration of skyskrapers, just about anything in the grid will be under pressure from developers to significantly densify. Left up to there own devices cities form density gradients. As the center densifies, the areas near it will too but less so.

Its fear that if big buildings were let into their neighborhood, that developers would quickly destroy the neighborhood is one of the the primary reasons that SF so tightly regulates building and puts so many hurdles to prevent new construction.

As for parking the parking regulations are too restrictive. Next time you go into a parking lot, count how many spaces have oil stains on them. If you look at most of the malls in the area, most spaces don't have oil stains in the parking spot, because they aren't being used. Most malls, strip malls, stores, offices, apartments and residential neighborhoods in general have far more parking than the place generally needs. The primary reason the we provide all of this parking is that various government regulations mandate that all of these uses provide all of this parking. But the cost of providing unused parking spaces just raises the cost of goods and service for all of us and lowers the overall density of the region. Its also just wasteful. Deregulating parking is one of the fastest ways I can think of to actually make infill pencil out in a lot of different neighborhoods at the same time.

If there wasn't enough parking in the lots people will park along the curbs. But curb parking actually makes pedestrians feel safer walking on the sidewalk because they have cars protecting them from passing traffic. Where people are parking along the curb, passing traffic has to slow down because you aren't sure if people are pulling out of traffic. Additionally when people are parking on curbs, you can charge them for the right to park on curbs. With the money from parking fees, you can spend that to improve the neighborhood, maybe upgrade bus stops, add pedestrian seating or better lighting in the neighborhood. Lastly people are much more willing to take transit to places where their is a charge for parking.

A big reason Old Town Pasadena was turned around was that the city relaxed the parking requirments but increased regulation of parking locations (generally it forced offstreet parking to be provided off to the side instead of infront of the shops and was willing to waive or reduce parking requirments in exchange for getting shops to agree to provide parking in off premise locations or share in the cost of a common parking structure). It then used the money from the parking lots and street parking to help turn around the neighborhood.

If you want to increase density, then you need to address parking. Getting rid of parking mimums makes a lot of sense. Its a reform that would actually get a lot more people to use transit.

[wburg]

mattinsac: The issue then becomes convincing cities like Folsom and Rancho Cordova to densify along the light rail line. Sacramento is ahead of the game in that respect. Rancho Cordova is at least attempting to make better use of its light rail corridor, and at least one firm (D&S) has plans to build residential condo towers in downtown Rancho Cordova. We'll see if Folsom follows suit: there are plans to build some fairly large things at the end of the line near Old Folsom, but I'm not sure how much is residential.

I don't really agree that high-rise towers are necessary to generate enough traffic for public transit. Low-rise and mid-rise residential, or even closely-spaced single family homes along the lines of SoCap or Tapestri Square can push density back up to the levels that Sacramento's old city had when its streetcars were profitable--and then some.

About parking: Sacramento's old city doesn't have a parking problem so much as it has a parking planning problem. A lot of office buildings in Midtown have vacant, gated-off parking lots at night when tons of people want to park to go to restaurants and clubs. My neighborhood association is actually advocating on behalf of a new restaurant that is supposed to have 24-hour dedicated parking: they have worked out a lease deal to use a nearby office building's parking at night, but city rules prevent this. We're speaking up because we don't want to see more parking lots in the central city any more than we want skyscrapers at 30th and J. It also seems like a way for the owners of those unused lots to make a little cash from their otherwise underutilized parking spaces. The same applies to frequently-vacant parking structures.

The problem with curb parking is that most of the central city's residential neighborhoods don't have much off-street parking. Some have garages and driveways, but much of the old city housing stock was built before cars, thus no garages. Apartment buildings typically have maybe one parking space in back for every 2 or 3 apartments, and big Victorians split up into apartments often don't have any parking included. This means that a lot of central city neighborhoods are already parked up by residents, with little room for commuters. Cars on the street, along with mow strips and street trees, do make pedestrians feel safer and slow traffic, so central city curbs really should be parked up--but residents have first priority, not commuters.

I don't think parking requirements should be eliminated entirely--but they should be reduced, and parking strategies need to be made more flexible. Parking for new projects shouldn't require more than one car per unit--but the idea is to look at that parking as "car storage" for the ideally less-frequent when you need to use your car, rather than centering the whole project around the car. Projects with built-in garages have advantages over no-parking or common-parking/parking-lot units in that the garage doesn't need to have a car: if the owner of such a unit wants to go car-free, they suddenly have a wonderful storage room for kayak or tools or whatever.

The other anti-parking strategy is a parking variance for transit proximity: if you build a project within two blocks of a streetcar line, you have to pay an assessment for the streetcar service but have drastically reduced parking requirements--ideally, enough to offset the assessment and still incentivize transit-adjacent development.

[Majin]

Originally Posted by wburg

The issue then becomes convincing cities like Folsom and Rancho Cordova to densify along the light rail line.

One of the many reasons why we need to abolish (or severely limit) these city governments and bring them into a one metropolitan government.

Originally Posted by wburg

Sacramento is ahead of the game in that respect.

Where would that be besides the grid? Don't say F65.

Originally Posted by wburg

Rancho Cordova is at least attempting to make better use of its light rail corridor, and at least one firm (D&S) has plans to build residential condo towers in downtown Rancho Cordova.

Must of missed that, where would that be?

Originally Posted by wburg

We'll see if Folsom follows suit: there are plans to build some fairly large things at the end of the line near Old Folsom, but I'm not sure how much is residential.

I know the attitude of Folsomites quite well, don't hold your breath.

Originally Posted by wburg

The other anti-parking strategy is a parking variance for transit proximity: if you build a project within two blocks of a streetcar line, you have to pay an assessment for the streetcar service but have drastically reduced parking requirements--ideally, enough to offset the assessment and still incentivize transit-adjacent development.

I definitely agree with this. Right now the grid still doesn't have enough public transit to support absolutely no parking but when the street lines come in there should progressively be less and less parking requirements and when our streetcar lines get more robust they should be eliminated completely.

[mattinsac]

Eliminating parking mandatory parking requirements doesn't mean banning new parking. Its just means dropping the mandate that there is some mandatory mimimum level of parking service that must be provided in new developments. If the developer thinks that adding parking to the project will help with ultimately selling the project he can include parking.

But if he thinks he can sell out the project without providing parking or by providing less parking than some arbitrary mimimal level of parking service would dictate, he should be able to do that too.

One of the things that severely limits density is the need to provide mimimum parking limits. It can cost $20k+ to construct a spot in a parking garage. If we are building spots in buildings that aren't actually being used to fulfill mandatory parking requirements, we are just needlessly driving up the price of building higher. Developers want to minimise costs, but they also don't want their projects to fail either. If they think its worthwhile to provide some level parking to support the project they will. They may think the best way to provide parking is to share spaces with another use. Maybe the club at night can use the parking in the office space next door. But the overwhelming evidence in this region is that developers have been more right than local planners in thinking that they have been required to provide too much parking. So get rid of the mimimum parking requirements.

If less parking in the area is provided, demand for parking will go up in the area. As the demand for curb parking and parking in city parking garages goes up, you can increase the price and use the price increases to subsidize your transit.

I am not just advocating the elimination parking requirements in midtown or downtown either. I am saying do it everywhere. If the Sunrise Mall thinks that they aren't using all of their parking lots and wants to build some more structures (whether its housing office or additional retail )in their parking lots, don't let mandatory parking requirements prevent them from do so. If some guy in Antelope wants to convert his garage into a granny unit for additional income, let him do it.

The more difficult it is to find parking in a neighborhood, the more likely people are to use transit. Don't make developers provide any more parking than the market actually demands.

[Phil Minor]

Matt-
Your bus pass or bus ticket by no means comes anywhere near the cost of operating the system. A mass transit system in a place like Sacramento is if its lucky if its getting its farebox to pay for 20-25% of the cost of funding the service. The reason there is no private sector competition for the mass transit is that there isn't any money in doing so.

But I think its useful to realise why the service needs such subsidies. A mass transit as two distinct functions. One function is to provide transportation to get people to and from work. But it also has a public service component as well. About half of RT's riders are from the public service component and the other half commuters. These functions are sometimes complimentary but are also often at cross purposes.

As to the public service component. There is a certain percentage of the population that is going to be too poor to afford a car, or because of old age, youth or disability like blindness just aren't going to be able to drive. Yet these people need to be able to get to work, get to a doctor or go shopping. The cost of providing service to this population is just expensive. RT runs 3 different buses some operating as often as every half hour to get people to the Kaiser on Morse Avenue. Most of these buses going to Kaiser are running mostly empty most of the time. If the goal was to just maximise farebox recovery, probably the fastest way to do it would be to just drop these types of bus lines. If the goal was to minimise greenhouse gasses again, we should probably kill these routes especially in a tough budget year.

The reason though RT doesn't do that, is the cost of the alternatives are even worse. If the unemployed and underemployed can't get to work, they will be on unemployment, welfare or possibly in jail. If the the elderly and the disabled can't get around using the bus system, they will be doing stuff like calling ambulences to get to the doctors office or avoiding treatment long enough where they drive up the cost of SSI medicare or any of the other government programs that would have to pick up the pieces. While this type of service is very expensive for RT to provide, the only thing worse is if these passengers didn't have access to it.

At some abstract level the idea of mandating that the light rail system shouldn't be upgraded until its faster to provide mass transit on the rail system seems like a really good idea that would make the mass transit system more efficient. I am sympathetic to that impulse.

But if you look at the track record of various efforts to make the system work more efficiently from above, in practice they have had the opposite effect. In an ideal world we would lay out light rail along the routes of the most highly used bus lines. We would build the system to provide transit to the neighborhoods with the highest transit demand. But the design of the current system is a function of a previous well intentioned policy of making transit more "efficient".

Funding for light rail was distributed to projects that could carry the most amount of people for the smallest amount of money. As an abstraction it seemed like a really good policy. But in practice it created a race to the bottom. Essentially the best way of providing the rail to the most amount of people for the least amount of money was to run the light rail system along existing rail lines and then just bus people to the new light rail system. Since all of the rail operators were doing this to get funding for there project, all of them had to do it to get funding. If you didn't do like this, you just wouldn't get funded. The problem of course is that land along most rail lines is zoned as warehouses or for industrial purposes. That means that most rail stops aren't going to have many people living or working anywhere near the light rail stops. This is why this region has provided the BEST transit service to the regions with the LEAST transit demand. The pre-existing rail corridor with all of these warehouses is just a crappy location. In an ideal world it would have gone up and down Stockton Blvd, the street with some of the busiest bus lines.

The big problem with trying to impose efficiency measures from above is that what the system does to maximise its score under the efficiency measure generally results in making the provisioning of its public service function even more expensive. If it needs to get a show a higher farebox recovery number to get more funding, it will shift more of the disabled into more expensive paratransit services.

About the only thing I think will lower the cost of the public service function of transit is to push those activities that demand public services closer to the light rail network. Going forward I think future hospitals should be sited in this region adjacent to the light rail network. I think housing for the government subsidized housing for people too poor to afford cars should again be put near light rail as should government offices including social security.

As you push more of the public service component to the light rail system, then you need to spend less money providing those very expensive public services activities. That in turn will allow you to spend more money on the getting people to work function of mass transit.

As to the lack of high density buildings along the light rail system in Rancho and Folsom. The big problem is the economics of those locations. Its expensive to build higher. You see skyscrappers in Chicago and Manhattan because rents are high enough to justify that. Right now along Folsom Blvd the economics just don't justify building higher in most of those locations.

The problem with prematurely upzoning an area is that if an area is zoned for 90 du/a but right now the location really only supports 15 du/a, the landowner won't build anything on that spot. He will just keep it vacant waiting for the market to improve. Yet if you have a bunch of vacant lots in an area, the market will never improve and might get worse. What I suspect the city will do is keep the area zoned as it is and if a developer proposes something that gets them closer to there goal, the city will approve a zoning variance. That way you can insure that supply never gets too far ahead of demand. A mild shortage of buildable lots is an excellent way of creating demand to build higher.

[wburg]

A mass transit system in a place like Sacramento is if its lucky if its getting its farebox to pay for 20-25% of the cost of funding the service. The reason there is no private sector competition for the mass transit is that there isn't any money in doing so.

Streets and highways don't have fareboxes, so their cost recovery rate is 0%--they are all paid for by taxes. Even the most populated cities don't get full farebox recovery: New York's transit system is very well-used, and their farebox recovery is still only about 60%. Part of this is because they have competition in the form of government-funded roads.

The social service role of transit is a comparatively recent thing. When streetcars were privately owned, there were no free bus passes for those on public assistance. In the 19th century, a five-cent fare was kind of expensive for most working people--the streetcar was a way for middle-class people to get around, not working-class people and certainly not the indigent and unemployed. The wealthy could afford carriages and drivers, the poor walked to work.

Over time, the value of 5 cents went down, but in most cases transit companies were not allowed to raise rates to match their operating costs. This is part of why public transit systems had trouble maintaining profitability--because they were considered a public service, even though they were privately operated, they couldn't charge what their service actually cost. In order to save money they shirked maintenance, increased headway times, deferred purchase of new equipment, or discontinued the least profitable routes. If they could have raised their fares, they might have stayed afloat. In Sacramento, raising fares from 5 cents to 4 tokens for a quarter produced a huge public outcry.

New higher-density development near transit should be available to all income levels, otherwise you simply produce economically segregated neighborhoods. People who live in the suburbs are very used to economic segregation, but part of city living is learning to live in the same neighborhood with people who don't necessarily look like you or make the same amount of money.

Also, higher densities doesn't necessarily mean skyscrapers or high-rise condos. A duplex on a downtown 40x80 lot is 26 dua, a 2-4 story apartment building can be as high as 60-100 dua, and a 4-6 story condo mid-rise can go denser than that.

I also heartily agree with Phil Minor that excessive upzoning results in lots sitting vacant. Or worse, speculators who buy old buildings and allow them to decay for years or decades because they hope someday they will be able to build a skyscraper there. A lot of the dilapidated buildings in Downtown and Midtown are because of this phenomenon--the best-known examples are the various properties of "Mo" Mohanna and the 700/800 block of K Street.

Of course, those blocks are now the property of the city, who doesn't really have much idea what to do with those buildings either...