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.

Recommendations

1Transit 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

2A 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.

---

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.

---

3Corridors 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.

---

4Off-board fare collection speeds up transit vehicles and reduces wait time for passengers.

---

Transit signal priority gives buses and light rail more green time and should always be used as part of BRT or LRT operations.³

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.

---

5The 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.

---

Loading zones should be provided near the intersection in the floating parking lane to discourage double parking.

1. International cities with successful Bus Rapid Transit systems have played an instrumental role in shaping land use around transit corridors to ensure incentives for transit-oriented development.
   Martha Panero, “Peer to Peer Information Exchange on Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and Bus Priority Best Practices” (Washington, D.C.: Federal Transit Administration, 2012). ↩︎
2. A.W. Agrawa, T. Goldman, and N. Hannaford, “Shared-Use Bus Priority Lanes on City Streets: Case Studies in Design and Management,” Mineta Transportation Institute, Report 11–10 (2012).
   “Designing Bus Rapid Transit Running Ways,” (Washington, D.C.: American Public Transportation Association, 2010). ↩︎
3. Shireen Chada and Robert Newland, “Effectiveness of Transit Signal Priority,” National Center for Transit Research (2012).
   Harriet Smith et al., “Transit Signal Priority: A Planning and Implementation Handbook,” (Washington, D.C.: Federal Transit Administration, 2005). ↩︎