Archinect - News

Austin Transit Partnership names UNStudio, HKS, and Gehl to lead city's public transit expansion

2023-03-06T19:47:00-05:00

UNStudio, HKS, and Gehl have been selected by the Austin Transit Partnership (ATP) to lead the architecture and urban design of Project Connect, a major expansion of the city’s public transit system. The voter-approved investment includes new light rail, expanded bus routes, a subway, and more services across Austin.

Austin voters approved Project Connect in November 2020, followed by the formation of ATP, an independent organization created in partnership with the City of Austin and CapMetro. It will serve to oversee the finance and development of the project, which aims to improve access to essential jobs, health care, education, and entertainment in the city.

Video courtesy UNStudio via Vimeo.

“The design team brings both broad international expertise delivering transit and public realm projects at the highest level of design and an acute sensitivity to Austin’s specific culture and heritage,” said Peter Mullan, ATP Executive Vice President for Architecture and Urban Design. “P...

Arup-supported $2.3 billion light rail project nears completion in the Greater Boston region

2022-03-25T18:29:00-04:00

The Union Square Branch opening of the long-awaited Boston Green Line Extension (GLX) marks a major milestone for the Arup-supported project.

The first of two segments as part of a 4.7-mile extension of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s (MBTA) regional transit system, the Union Square Branch comprises the new Union Square and Lechmere stations. The opening of the Medford Branch later this year will conclude the development of this decades-long project.

The GLX is expected to add 50,000 daily passenger trips to Boston’s transit network and bring much-needed service to the Somerville, Cambridge, and Medford communities. The project will also help bring the city closer to meeting its 2050 goal of carbon neutrality by significantly reducing vehicle-related emissions.

Arup is serving as the project’s Design Professional, supporting the MBTA with overseeing the design development, and testing and commissioning process. The firm was first tapped by the MBTA as a consultan...

Will coronavirus make transit-oriented development a thing of the past?

2020-05-08T12:32:00-04:00

“This is an opportunity to think in new ways, but people will still want to live close to transit,” [Dr. Richard J. Jackson] said. The challenge for developers will be marrying density with safety, which will now require an interdisciplinary approach [...]

The New York Times takes a look at the potential impact the coronavirus pandemic could have on the future of transit-oriented development in the United States. Transit use has fallen drastically during the lockdown period, while many high-profile figures, including New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, have spoken out against urban density in response to the pandemic.These trends are converging to potentially make TOD projects less desirable in the future.

Dr. Jackson tells The New York Times, "The era of a single architect designing buildings is over, he said, and transit-oriented development will need to bring in the best minds from design, health and transit to come up with living spaces that are conducive to community but also the well-being of residents."

Transit-oriented development thrives ahead of light rail debut in Seattle

2019-10-06T12:00:00-04:00

The Roosevelt neighborhood has the makings of a huge transit-oriented development success story. A building boom is underway, protected bike lanes have recently gone in, and the station site will be home to an affordable housing complex right around the time trains begin operating. Northgate Link, along with an underground station in Roosevelt, will open in 2021, and the neighborhood–like others along the line–are already transforming

The Urbanist takes a look at three neighborhoods in Seattle that have seen a rush in transit-oriented development as a new light rail line heads toward its 2021 completion.

Phoenix votes to continue expanding light rail network

2019-08-28T13:00:00-04:00

Voters in Phoenix have soundly rejected a proposal that would have halted the expansion of the city’s light rail system—a proposition that had the backing of dark money linked to the notorious anti-transit Koch brothers.

The rejected initiative would have terminated "all construction, development, extension, and expansion of” light rail lines in the city in order to redirect funds appropriated for transit expansion to more auto-centric infrastructure.

The result represents a set back for the dark money-fueled groups that have mobilized in opposition to local and state-level transit expansion efforts across the country.

Exploiting the complicated politics of transit expansion

2019-08-08T19:29:00-04:00

Proposition 105, a measure backed by a group called Building a Better Phoenix, would halt all future light rail expansions, directing already-earmarked tax dollars toward “other transportation improvements”—mostly road construction. Like a number of efforts to kill urban-rail plans around the U.S., the initiative to stop Phoenix’s transit development has ties to Americans for Prosperity, the advocacy group funded by David H. Koch and Charles Koch.

CityLab's Laura Bliss delves into the multi-faceted and contentious back-and-forth effort to build new light rail infrastructure in Phoenix, Arizona, where issues of urban equity, dark political money, and changing transportation needs have rankled residents of all stripes.

Portland to study downtown subway

2019-06-28T14:50:00-04:00

Metro Oregon and Portland's TriMet are studying the possibility of creating a new below-ground transit route through the city's downtown.

Planning for future growth, the organizations are working to link the Lloyd Center shopping mall on the eastern banks of the Willamette River with Southwest Portland through downtown. The transit authority currently runs approximately 40 trains per hour during the busiest times of the day across the downtown area, a figure that will need to increase by at least 50% in coming decades to accommodate projected population growth.

The new route could, according to Metro Oregon, reduce travel time through downtown Portland by up to 15 minutes while adding 15,200 daily riders to the city's transit system.

TriMet is planning to hold community meetings as it moves to initiate a formal process for approving and constructing the tunnel.

ArtCenter College of Design presents 15-year master plan designed by Michael Maltzan Architecture & Tina Chee Landscape Studio

2017-11-06T14:12:00-05:00

The ArtCenter College of Design continues to move forward with a 15-year master plan for its two Pasadena campuses, with the release of a draft environmental impact report for the project. At completion, the Michael Maltzan- and Tina Chee Landscape Studio-designed expansion would increase the school's total enrollment from 2,000 full-time students to 2,500 full-time students, and its total staffing from 753 faculty to 994 faculty.

The City of Pasadena informs on its web page dedicated to the master plan project: "The ArtCenter College of Design (ArtCenter) proposes a 15-year Master Plan (the Project) that focuses growth on its South Campus, while providing for infrastructure improvements and building renovations on its Hillside Campus. The Project would be implemented in two phases, with Phase I occurring in the first five years of the Master Plan and Phase II occurring in the final ten years."

Image: Michael Maltzan Architecture, via artcenter.edu

More information can also be found on the school's ArtCenter Master Plan page.

Construction of the world’s first light rail on a floating bridge to start next month in Seattle

2017-05-16T18:36:00-04:00

Engineers have to ensure the bridge will remain buoyant when a pair of 300-ton trains pass each other, and that the high-voltage current that powers the trains won’t stray into the bridge’s pontoons and corrode its steel rebar. They spent $53 million just to design the section across Lake Washington.

The Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge is a floating bridge that stretches across Lake Washington, connecting Seattle and Bellevue through Interstate 90 freeway.

This April the final design promising to replace the center express lanes of I-90 with full speed light rail was signed off.

Subject to much controversy, Sound Transit has engineered and field-tested unique joints in order for the rail to account for the bridge's movement and weather conditions.

Rail service is projected to begin in 2023.

Mapping how LA's expanding Metro network fuels gentrification (or not)

2016-09-09T14:01:00-04:00

Researchers from the Urban Displacement project, a joint UCLA and UC Berkeley effort, recently released a gentrification map of Los Angeles. They examined the city from 1990 to 2000 and up to 2015, focusing on neighborhoods near transit stops. The goal was to see if these areas saw higher rents and more displacement than other areas. The answer? Yes — with some exceptions.

Some of the UCLA researchers' key findings for Los Angeles Country (via the project's website, urbandisplacement.org):

Our analysis found that areas around transit stations are changing and that many of the changes are in direction of neighborhood upscaling and gentrification.
Examining the changes from 2000 to 2013, we find that relative to non-transit areas, transit neighborhoods are more associated with higher increases in whites, college educated, higher income households and greater increases in the cost of rent. Conversely, transit neighborhoods are associated with greater losses in disadvantaged populations including individuals with less than a high school diploma and lower income households.
The impacts of changes vary across locations but the biggest impacts seem to be around the Downtown areas where transit-oriented development interacts with other interventions aiming to revitalize the urban form.

Click here for the interactive LA map. — Looking for the SF Bay Area map inste...

How LA is changing, one rail line at a time

2016-05-02T13:07:00-04:00

“A good part of any day in Los Angeles,” Joan Didion wrote in 1989, “is spent driving, alone, through streets devoid of meaning to the driver, which is one reason the place exhilarates some people, and floods others with an amorphous unease.” I quote this statement every chance I get; it is among the most trenchant ever written about the place. But all that is changing, or might be, if the promises implied by the Expo Line expansion can be kept.

On May 20, Los Angeles's Metro will open the expansion of its Expo Line, stretching from downtown past its current terminus in Culver City all the way to Santa Monica, blocks from the Pacific Ocean. The dream of "Broadway to the beach" by train in LA will soon become a reality, and stands to be a watershed moment in the city's transit development, as David Ulin reflects in the New York Times:

Regardless of what the Expo Line ultimately does or doesn’t do for traffic, this is, I think, the essence of what it offers: the notion of Los Angeles as a space we occupy together, collective and evolving, where in the act of getting lost, as I discovered on Venice Boulevard, we may also unexpectedly be found.

Related on Archinect:

Will LA's new metro extension bring growth to the city's peripheries?

2016-03-10T20:33:00-05:00

When City Manager Oliver Chi looks across Station Square next to the new Gold Line stop in Monrovia, he doesn't see a dilapidated train depot. He sees a bustling restaurant. Where an empty lot now sits, he sees a five-story apartment complex. That old lumber house? A bustling food hall. Los Angeles County's growing light-rail network plunges deeper than it ever has into suburbia this week with the opening of the Gold Line extension linking Pasadena to Azusa.

Obsessed with infrastructure? Take a look at some related coverage:

Vancouver's unused railway to become public greenway

2016-03-10T13:07:00-05:00

The City of Vancouver has reached an agreement with Canadian Pacific Railway that will transform a contentious stretch of old rail corridor into a public greenway. Under the deal, the city will pay $55 million to purchase the land on the railway route, which extends for nine kilometres from False Creek near Downtown Vancouver to Marpole on the city's south side.

Once the unofficial home to community gardens and in situ artworks, under the city's plan the Vancouver's Arbutus Corridor will become a place for cyclists and walkers. It's not the High Line (although much like that project, Vancouver city officials would like to continue thinking that the rail tracks could be still be used for transportation after the corridor is developed).

What else is going on in Vancouver? Creative, intriguing things:

Pedestrians and light rail retake Sydney (well, George Street at least)

2015-07-28T19:28:00-04:00

The transformative effect of removing cars from a dedicated street or urban center and creating a pedestrian-friendly area isn't a new idea, but it's a popular one. Sydney, Australia has decided to repurpose its relatively trafficky George Street into an elegant shopping and walking area bisected by light rail, with design input from French architect Thomas Richez. According to The Sydney Morning Herald Richez, who has overseen the development of numerous public spaces in Africa and Europe, is now working with the city to create a zone that would foster a more relaxed vibe among pedestrians. As he explains, "The idea is, a good tramway line is like a reserve, a pleasant place, whether people use the transportation system or not."

The tramway in Reims, with the cathedral in the background. (Photo: Richez Associes)

Even in car-centric Los Angeles, institutions as varied as The Getty Center and commercial shopping cluster The Grove have employed similar non-pedestrian design strategi...

Why Portland Is Building a Multi-Modal Bridge That Bans Cars

2014-08-20T14:44:00-04:00

Tilikum Crossing is the nation's first multi-modal bridge that will be off-limits to private automobiles. It will carry MAX light rail trains (the impetus for construction) as well as Portland's streetcar line and city buses, and of course pedestrian and bike lanes on both sides—but no cars. [...] "Transit has a huge impact on urban planning. I mean, if you look at our city, it was designed around streetcars. On some level, it has to be part of their DNA."