Land values are pushing commuters out to the periphery of the Northeast Corridor, which means they have to drive long distances back in to get to work.
Author Archive
The ‘Shadow Northeast Corridor’ Draws Warehouses … and People
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011We Work Close to Home … But We Drive There
Thursday, September 22nd, 2011The recently released American Community Survey gives us the first look in 10 years at commuting data at the county and local level. New Jersey is still a national leader in transit ridership, thanks primarily to its transit system’s orientation toward the major employment hubs of New York City and Philadelphia. Unfortunately, this leaves most in-state workers with driving as their only option, although Hudson and Essex counties provide examples of what can happen when we think about improving access to our homegrown centers.
Zero-Vehicle Households and Transit
Thursday, September 1st, 2011The metropolitan areas with the greatest numbers of zero-vehicle households are also among those doing the best job of serving the car-less population, the majority of which is lower-income households. However, the high rate of co-location of zero-vehicle households with public transportation illustrates the painful irony of encouraging lower-income car-less households to live near transit while jobs are migrating away from transit on the other end.
Density and Sprawl Are Not Mutually Exclusive
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011Low density is certainly one of the dysfunctions of the dominant development pattern since 1950, but it is not the only one. Two other factors — segregation of destination types and a lack of connectivity in the local street network — also contrive to force people into their cars for most daily activities, even in neighborhoods with high housing density.
City-Loving Millennials: Are They Born That Way?
Thursday, July 28th, 2011The “why” of Millennials’ counter-reaction to the suburban cul-de-sacs and office parks of their parents’ generation is something the experts tend not to explore very deeply, but perhaps we can legitimately point to their change in attitude as being a direct and tangible result of education and advocacy efforts.
Exclusionary Zoning, Sprawl on the Rise
Thursday, July 21st, 2011A new study by Rowan University’s Geospatial Research Laboratory finds that municipal zoning in New Jersey has resulted in a land-use pattern that has grown substantially more exclusionary and more sprawling over the last two decades.
The Mall as Private City
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011Illuminated by two more decades of hindsight into the evolution of the retail sector, the mall does share some previously under-appreciated similarities with the old downtown that it nearly killed off.
Metropark, and the Limits of Brookings’ Transit Accessibility Study
Monday, June 13th, 2011Brookings’ jobs-accessibility study would be more valuable if it measured how accessible transit is to workers, not just to their jobs.
Is Jersey City a Suburb? Joel Kotkin Thinks So.
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011For much of the past decade, there has been a constant media drumbeat about the “return to the cities.” Urban real estate interests, environmentalists and planners have widely promoted this idea.
Transit-Accessible Towns In New Jersey Are More Recession-Resistant
Thursday, February 24th, 2011There are 140 New Jersey municipalities that host at least one rail transit station, including commuter rail (NJ Transit or SEPTA), light rail (Hudson-Bergen, River Line and Newark City Subway) and the PATH and PATCO systems. These rail-transit municipalities accounted […]