Transportation Demand Management
I was at the West Medford Community Center this past week, chatting with residents over lunch. A leader in the center named Joe brought up a few issues that, as he said, they'd been talking about for decades. The entrance to the West Medford Commuter Rail was not ADA compliant — so, those with disabilities could not access it. He also noted that there was a huge amount of traffic going through Medford Square, to the point that it could be dangerous for a few of the WMCC’s regulars.
In any conversation about a constituent’s concerns, I try to make it very clear what a City Councilor has control over and what is out of my hands. Solving the traffic issue in West Medford would likely require, first, getting a subway system that is not inherently flawed (Wendover Productions made an excellent video outlining the problems with the MBTA), adding another ramp off I-93 that does not pour traffic through Medford Square, and removing cars from the road in general.
A Transportation Demand Management ordinance can partially address the third problem. TDM is a wonky program that city planners learn about in their graduate degrees, so it’s a bit difficult to sell to the public. But it’s been used very successfully to spur development in neighboring municipalities. And this is the blog, so, by gummy, I’m going to talk about it.
When a developer decides to build a new project, it puts certain demands on transportation in a given area. A high-rise building with 100 units could be expected to add 20 new cars to the road. If a developer wants to reduce the number of parking spots — say, to put retail on the bottom floor — that could have an even more substantial impact. A way to offset that impact would be to, for instance, install bike racks, or pay for a shuttle, or offer residents MBTA passes for free. So, there are “debits” (i.e. less parking, denser units) and “credits” (bike racks, a shuttle). TDM is a formal, points-based system that allows developers to offset these debits with credits automatically. So, if a developer finds that their building requires four debit points because their new apartment building will add 50 new cards to the road, they can earn four credits by paying for a shuttle that residents use for free. (Everett’s TDM user guide gets into the specific implementation of theirs, including a list of credits and debits.)
What if a developer can’t pay for a whole shuttle? Developers can band together to pool their money for a single shuttle. Such a band of developers is called a Transportation Management Association, or TMA. The Lower Mystic TMA is the Transportation Management Association that covers Medford, Malden, Everett, and Charlestown, and they fund an Encore bus that drives between Everett and Charlestown. But even though Medford comprises the plurality of the Lower Mystic TMA’s jurisdiction, we participate very little in the TMA, in large part because we don’t have an ordinance for it.
Why else is TDM useful? When developers decide whether or not to build, they look first and foremost at profit margins (because they need to make money) and timelines (because sitting on a project for years with no progress costs money). How long will it take to get a project off the ground in a given municipality? A huge contributor to these delays are zoning variances. Usually, developers need to have something in their new buildings that differs from zoning regulati. It could be dimensional requirements, it could be height, it could be the need for an extra sign. These need to go through the Zoning Board of Appeals, which can approve such variances. The issue with this is, first, it delays a project, because the ZBA meets monthly and has a lot on its plate, and, second, being a board comprised of people with their own subjective opinions, it can be unpredictable. So, developers like TDM because zoning variances are all handled at the staff level in an automated credits and debits system, thus making it faster and more predictable.
From my perspective, there’s two parts of a TDM program that need to be implemented. City Council passes the ordinance framing the program and formally allowing the new system for zoning variances. The meat and implementation, however, is done at the staff level. So, even after the ordinance is passed, I need buy-in from staff to not only change common practice with developers but also to fund a study to determine a unique credit/debit system for Medford.
