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Urban Street Design Guide Index

Urban Street Design Guide
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Transit Corridor

Transit Corridor

Transit corridors, including light rail (LRT), streetcar, and bus rapid transit (BRT), promote economic development around high-quality transit service while fostering a pedestrian scale in which walking and biking actively complement public transit. As major generators of pedestrian traffic, heavy surface transit routes should be prioritized for pedestrian safety improvements in both the immediate surrounding area and major access routes within the transit access shed.
When redesigning streets for high-quality transit service, designers should assess how transit service is impacted not only by the geometry of the corridor, but also its existing signal timing, signal phasing, turns, and other operations that may jeopardize the quality of service.

The street illustrated below depicts a 120-foot roadway within a 150-foot right-of-way.

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Transit corridor retrofits should be coordinated with land use changes to maximize a corridor’s potential for economic growth and physical transformation.

Recommendations

1 Transit corridor retrofits should be coordinated with land use changes to maximize a corridor’s potential for economic growth and physical transformation. Setback guidelines and other land use regulations should be tailored to create a pedestrian-scale environment.1
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For more information on retrofitting large urban arterials, see Restructuring the Commercial Strip: A Practical Guide for Planning the Revitalization of Deteriorating Strip Corridors ( US EPA, 2010)
2 A raised cycle track on both sides of the corridor promotes the combination of bicycle and transit usage. A center-running 1-way or 2-way cycle track may be preferable in some cases to reduce the dangers of turning conflicts in combination with transit.
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Enforcement measures should be put in place to discourage encroaching vehicles from using the dedicated bus lanes. In some cases, median transit lanes may serve as a route for emergency vehicles.
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Use of dedicated transit lanes by emergency vehicles or taxis may entail design consequences that decrease the effectiveness of transit service or allow other vehicles to more easily encroach into the dedicated lanes.
3 Corridors with high transit traffic, where double-parking and local traffic pose obstacles to effective transit, should be considered for BRT, LRT, or streetcar. High-quality transit service and median transit lanes decrease conflicts between buses and through traffic on heavy transit routes, can speed travel times, and reinforce the desirability of transit as an option.2
Wide transit corridors are challenging to cross in a single cycle. Consider the tradeoffs between shortening signal cycle lengths and providing sufficient time for all pedestrians to cross the street.

See Crosswalks

4 Off-board fare collection speeds up transit vehicles and reduces wait time for passengers.
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Transit signal priority gives buses and light rail more green time and should always be used as part of BRT or LRT operations.3
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For more information on Transit Signal Priority, see Shireen Chada and Robert Newland, “Effectiveness of Transit Signal Priority,” National Center for Transit Research (2012) and Harriet Smith et al., “Transit Signal Priority: A Planning and Implementation Handbook,” (Washington, D.C.: Federal Transit Administration, 2005).
A side-running bus, streetcar, or light rail system may be preferable when adjacent land uses are heavily weighted toward one side of the corridor.

See Dedicated Curbside/Offset Bus Lanes

5 The design of a transit stop is an opportunity to reinforce the speed and desirability of the system. Shelters and stations should be built to accommodate the typical number of waiting passengers at the peak hour.
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Loading zones should be provided near the intersection in the floating parking lane to discourage double parking.
First Hill Streetcar Project

References

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Adapted from the Urban Street Design Guide, published by Island Press.

References

References for Transit Corridor: 12 found.