Multimodal Transportation District

May 7, 2004

As we consider our transportation future and the 2025 Transportation Plan, our greatest single opportunity to reduce traffic congestion and improve mobility is to achieve a modal shift by Leon County’s 65,000 college students from automobiles to transit, walking and bicycling. The following is a proposal that would combine several ideas with a state land-use planning framework to take full advantage of this opportunity.

Because 20 to 25 percent of Leon County’s population growth in the next two decades will be college students, this is an especially important way to prepare for future transportation needs.

The Proposal in Brief

The city and county would jointly adopt comprehensive plan amendments to establish a Multimodal Transportation District, with the help of the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) and Florida Department of Community Affairs (DCA), in accordance with the Urban Infill and Redevelopment Act of 1999 (F.S. 163.3180). It would encompass a large area, primarily southwest Tallahassee and Leon County, of residential, commercial and education areas centering on Florida State University (FSU), Florida A&M University (FAMU) and Tallahassee Community College (TCC), including the proposed Education Quadrant and nearby areas.

A coordinated array of growth management and transportation changes would provide students of these colleges with favored choices to ride buses, to bicycle, or to walk to their respective campuses and to other activities. This would produce a significant modal shift away from automobile use that would both improve student mobility and reduce traffic congestion in the urban core.

Its other benefits would be to reduce urban sprawl, revitalize our urban core, and provide genuine transportation choices to students now virtually required to drive for their mobility.

Key Elements

Multimodal Transportation District

Jointly administered by FDOT and DCA, this planning framework was established by statute based on recommendations by the Transportation and Land Use Study Committee (1999), which sought to reconcile transportation programs and land use practices. Its goal is to expand the use of multiple modes by coordinating transportation improvements (such as improved transit service and pedestrian facilities) and land use measures that enable multimodal transportation to succeed.

According to the handbook for this program (Multimodal Transportation Districts and Areawide Quality of Service Handbook), a local government can have such a district designated by meeting these criteria:

• Complementary mix of land uses to support transportation alternatives.

• Appropriate density and intensity of land uses to demonstrate transit ridership.

• Network connectivity that provides a network of pedestrian, bicycle and transit.

• Design features that facilitate transit and pedestrian activities, including transit-oriented development.

• Consideration of schools, including universities.

• Reduction in vehicle-miles traveled.

The roles of FDOT and DCA are to provide significant technical assistance to our planning staff to achieve this designation, provide a technical evaluation of the proposed district and comprehensive plan amendments, and conduct a biennial review.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of the MMTD designation is the authorization by statute for local governments to exempt new projects that promote transit use from transportation concurrency requirements. These projects can range from on-campus dormitories to off-campus apartment complexes and commercial centers. It would encourage such new projects as Benchmark Construction’s University Village redevelopment of the underused Westwood Shopping Center property.

College Student Transit Program

The goal of this program would be to shift a significant share of our 65,000 FSU, FAMU and TCC students (and 80,000 to 85,000 by 2025) away from their required over-reliance on cars to get to and around the three campuses. It would emphasize expanded bus service with six to 10-minute headways on key routes, convenient shelters, pedestrian safety, and longer hours of service. Funding would come from student fees like FSU’s Transportation Access Fee.

It would complement improved pedestrian and bicycle facilities, more on-campus housing, and development of more mixed-use centers with shopping and services enabled by the MMTD mentioned above.

This transit program is the low-hanging fruit of transportation solutions, for these reasons:

• The vast majority of off-campus students live within a mile or two of their campuses.

• They tend to live along major corridors that lead to the campuses, such as Tharpe, Mission, Tennessee, Pensacola, Jackson Bluff, Lake Bradford, and South Adams.

• There is probably 100 percent turnover of students every four or five years, presenting the opportunity to change individual travel habits easily.

• Mechanisms exist for increased or reallocated surcharges in student fees, fully funding an expanded service that all students could ride simply by showing a student ID card.

• The city is already meeting with student leaders about similar transportation solutions.

Such a plan would require supportive city, county and campus policies, such as: 

• Eliminating the subsidy for student motorists by FSU that requires all students to pay a Transportation Access Fee for a parking permit, whether students drive or not. Less than a quarter of the fee’s revenues go for bus service (the rest to build new parking garages).

• Reduced on-campus student parking and restricted auto ownership by students.

• Major expansion of on-campus housing, with no new parking.

• Requirements that new off-campus student apartment complexes help fund new bus shelters (in return for reduced resident parking requirements) or operations.

• Expanded network of bikeways and crossings to, from, and within campuses.

• Strict design standards for roadway capacity and resurfacing projects along student corridors that emphasize pedestrian and bicyclist safety and mobility.

The MMTD framework can provide the coordinated land use and transportation effort needed to ensure that the built environment of the transit program area promotes ridership, walking and bicycling.

The Education Quadrant

While the area that would be served by the College Student Transit Program is undefined, most of it surely would be in the “Education Quadrant” of south and west Tallahassee envisioned by TCC President Bill Law. The proposed Comprehensive Plan Amendment 2004-2-T-011 expanding the University Transition is delineates the Education Quadrant. Some additional areas outside of this would be appropriate to include in the MMTD.

President Law has proposed that local governments and the three universities and college carefully plan and encourage new housing for the future growth of our student population – as well as new affordable housing for families with children, better public transportation options, and expanded entrepreneurial and job opportunities.

President Law also envisions use of the Capital Cascades Trail as an arterial greenway that connects with many other hiking and biking trails. He proposes that the Education Quadrant become broadband-enhanced to narrow the digital divide for disadvantaged families in the area. Expanding the city’s Neighborhood Renaissance Program could ensure that existing neighborhoods fully participate in the progress around them.

The Education Quadrant idea has the potential to knit the community together with the three campuses not only in transportation and land use patterns, but also in economic and social opportunity.

FSU, FAMU, and TCC Master Plans

The success of this effort will depend on the cooperation of the three institutions to adapt their campus master plans to the MMTD and student transit program. That would require all three re-thinking their master plans to emphasize urban solutions for what are increasingly urban problems caused by growth of their student populations and campus facilities.

For example, current plans for new parking garages for students at FSU and TCC would jeopardize the success of the student transit program by providing even more incentives to students to drive instead of using other modes. Moreover, FSU’s Transportation Access Fee is an unintended subsidy to student motorists by non-motorists, since both pay the same fee, which entitles motorists to free parking on campus. TCC’s master plan shows a cluster of its buildings virtually surrounded by large surface parking lots, much as conventional suburban shopping malls are laid out.

Instead, the FSU and FAMU Master Plans have the opportunity to build more on-campus housing that would reduce student automobile use, encourage new commercial development near the campuses, and improve academic achievement (students housed on campus tend to learn better than those living off campus). While not allowed by statute to build on-campus housing, TCC could partner with the city and private developers to build more student housing and mixed-use projects within walking distance of its campus.

Being land-locked as they are, our three universities and college would both advance the goals of this program and benefit themselves financially by more efficient use of their scarcest resources – available land – for housing, teaching and research, instead of automobiles.

Comprehensive Plan Amendment 2004-2-T-011 (University Transition)

Proposed by staff and under consideration in the current amendment cycle, it greatly expands the area suitable for the University Transition land use category to comprise what President Law has envisioned as the Education Quadrant. It would increase allowable densities for student housing and related commercial uses.

There are no apparent major conflicts between this amendment and the proposed MMTD, although a closer examination of such regulations as parking requirements might suggest modifications of its current draft to prevent conflicts with the MMTD criteria.

Because the amendment primarily addresses land us, not transportation, and its boundaries do not include such potential transit corridors as Mission Road and Tharpe Street, it cannot be a substitute for an MMTD.

Properly reviewed and revised (if necessary), the amendment can be a useful first step toward adoption later of the Multimodal Transportation District.

Other Elements

The Southern Strategy, Blueprint 2000, University Park, Gaines Street Vitalization, Frenchtown and Downtown CRAs, Bicycle-Pedestrian Master Plan, several corridor students and sector plans, and other initiatives are consistent with the goals of the MMTD and student transit program.

In fact, the Multimodal Transportation District provides a planning framework to pull together the many initiatives in this geographic area.

Next Steps

Meeting in workshop as the city-county planning agency – perhaps during the May 27 joint workshop on 2004-2 comp plan amendments – our two commissions could consider this proposal as a major initiative. With help from FDOT and DCA, our planning staffs could refine and develop the major elements of the Multimodal Transportation District, incorporating in it the other major elements. Drafted as comprehensive plan amendments, the initiative would undergo review and adoption during the 2005-2 cycle.