Lynch Diagram
Mobility Hubs are more than solely transportation transfer points. They are public spaces serving the area and community they are in. They are locations that serve to bring the city and create connections. There is daily activity and economic movement.
What do they look like? They are spots where multiple choices of transportation are available and ready to use for anyone who needs them. People can transfer from one mode of transportation to the next. The Hub is human scaled and prioritizes pedestrian activity. Because this is a public place, safety and accessibility are main factors to build this space. Furthermore, Mobility Hubs are spaces serving people and their communities.
Mobility Hubs are a part of people’s daily lives. People move around and use transportation of various forms daily. And as they move around there are icons and landmarks that make an impression as part of their day. A Mobility Hub will be an important landmark in the daily activities of people. Therefore, Mobility Hubs do much more than merely serve as transportation transfer points. They are areas people go to meet up with others. They should also serve as areas were people can speak up and be informed on local and community issues.
To enhance people’s quality of life, Mobility Hubs are attractive and engaging. Landscaping will add beauty and even buffers for pedestrians. Mobility Hubs include services such as retail, educational resources, and food.
Mobility Hubs will have a distinct look in each location. The factors that affect how each Mobility Hub functions and what services it provides include its location relative to housing, jobs and urban amenities. It also includes the culture and vision the community has. Mobility Hubs are public spaces of high daily movement to serve the area and community they are located.
When thinking about mobility throughout the Kansas City metropolitan area, one must always consider the future, especially as we lie on the cusp of an autonomous vehicle revolution. While it may be difficult to imagine a world where there are no human-controlled vehicles, it is believed that full automobile autonomy is inevitable.
When this shift happens, our built environment will take on a much different aesthetic. According to Dr. Sungyop Kim, a transportation planner at UMKC, the use of bus transit may become obsolete. Roads may be filled with smaller pod-like vehicles in lieu of buses (Kim, 2018).
In addition, traffic signs, signals, and street markings will be a thing of the past. As gasoline-powered engines disappear, so too will gas stations with bold signage that are situated on lots dominated by impervious surfaces. In fact, impervious surfaces may be reduced to negligible amounts as extra surface area to compensate human error becomes unnecessary. Landscape architects may find themselves inundated with work as we redesign our built environment to include much more greenery and landscaping.
Works cited
Kim, Sungyop. Personal Interview. UMKC campus. February, 5, 2018.
Here are two pictures of Lynchian Diagrams that I drew. These give you an idea about how I analyze a location – using rough sketch methods. Each of these locations are found in the Northland and are possible mobility hubs in the future.
Autonomous vehicles are here. This is no longer a distant future but an immediate reality. This is still hard to me to real-ize. I have yet to see one or be chauffeured around by one. But, they are here, and the technology will only be moving forward.
(source: www.autoexpress.com)
As I think about the ways in which this transportation mode will shape our cities and realities, I find it important to think about what I consider the vision to be. I find the words of NACTO’s Blueprint for Autonomous Vehicles to align very closely with my own goals: “it is a human-oriented vision for the potential of city streets, intersections, and networks-one in which automation can serve the goals of safety, equity, public health, and sustainability” (2017).
I hope that this movement provides broader access to all people and all places. The importance of choice will be key as this new technology asks people to give what has been a symbol of freedom in the United States for close to 100 years- the private vehicle. I also find it of utmost importance to remember that the pedestrian will never be a diminishing mode of movement. No matter what other forms of transit are used: bike, bus, streetcar, ferry, train, or vehicle, there is always a time in which one is walking- no matter how short the distance.
NACTO is also helpful in visualizing how the autonomous vehicle, that takes up less street space and reduces parking needs, can open up space for green infrastructure, and enhanced pedestrian and bicycle environments.
I for one, am excited. With the proper forethought and public policy, this new transportation mode could create more environmentally and people friendly places.
Could a small city like Gladstone, Grain Valley or Gardner, KS become a destination? If Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is all about transit and development, could places like Downtown Gladstone or Downtown Gardner, KS become the next big thing?
Could mixed-use buildings work well in small suburban towns? Is it possible that one day Downtown Gardner could attract citizens from Overland Park to visit the only indoor 4-D Movie Theater in the whole state of Kansas? Could people come from all over the metro to watch the Professional Indoor Lacrosse team “The KC Doughboys (Named after the American Soldier from WW1)” in downtown Gladstone? Grain Valley could have the only Museum and Hall Of Fame of KC BBQ.
TOD could take a small downtown area just trying to survive and transform it into a thriving hot spot. Across the metro, small town centers are either hotspots or deserts; TOD could be the answer to these town centers.
Source: Frostbite45
Even after a Mobility Hub is defined, it still might beg the question of why. What about this terminology makes it different from transportation oriented development?
In my opinion, the term mobility hub implies that the primary focus is moving people. These centers should be about smooth transitioning between all transportation modes: walking, biking, cars, and transit.
(Source: Smart Moves 3.0 MARC)
The resurgence of interest in rail, the onset of autonomous vehicles, and the political call to upscale our infrastructure, all create an environment where we have to ask- In this new age of transportation, how can we be proactive? How can we make sure that human scale is emphasized? How can we learn from the mistakes we made with automobiles?
Transportation Oriented Development, despite having transportation in the name, relates primarily to the development that takes place around transportation modes. It includes important factors such as housing, retail, services, and jobs centers. These are key in creating housing density and job density that will continuously support the associated transit.
(Source: metrolinx.com)
These features should undoubtedly be considered in the short and long range goals of mobility hubs. Value capture will be key in funding these mobility hubs.
However, development can take place around any form of transportation, as we see in auto oriented developments across the United States.
Mobility Hubs are about creating a system that is easier, more pleasant, smooth, and efficient: to move more people in a more efficient manner; to give people choice and freedom of movement; to integrate systems that will replenish people’s pockets, time, and the environment.
(Source: Norreport Transit Station, Denmark)
Mobility hubs are central places or districts that act as converging points for public transit and an integrated suite of mobility services, scaled for their respective environments and functions. Mobility hubs are also areas where there is an intensive concentration of working, living, shopping and/or playing in the form of mixed-use development. Mobility hubs serve three critical roles in the new Smart Moves 3.0 system: origin, destination and transfer point. (MARC, Defining Smart Moves System 2017:2)
Mobility hubs have been important parts of smart city systems in other regions of North America including greater Toronto and Broward County. The Smart Moves plan provides a Kansas City hierarchy for applying Mobility Hubs to the region. A meaningful mobility hub must go beyond the 20th century park and ride. They must incorporate many amenities into the system. Potential amenities at Mobility Hubs include:
(MARC, Defining Smart Moves System 2017:4)
Many questions remain about how to implement mobility hubs in greater Kansas City.
The Kansas City Metropolitan Area has one of the most extensive highway networks per capita in the country. Our highways allow us to get anywhere in the metro by car within an hour and it facilitates a relatively low average commute time of 23 minutes – a quicker commute time than any Metro Area larger than Kansas City (2016 ACS Data) . While we provide good highway access, we lag in provided transportation alternatives. A recent Brookings Institution study found that the Kansas City Metropolitan Area ranked 94th out of the 100th largest metropolitan areas in job access (Tomar 2012). Kansas City then has developed a mode of urbanism that enforces automobile dependency.
How did we end up this way? Since World War II ended we have built a large network of expressways and a network of fast (35 mph to 45mph to 55mph) arterials that feed into the expressway network. This large amount of highway buildings has given Kansas City the second largest amount of freeway miles commuting per capita (Texas A&M Transportation Institute 2018) We drive these freeway miles because we have developed at a relative low density. Since 1970, much of the area of Greater Kansas City was developed as neighborhoods of single-family houses on lots that are 8,000 square feet or larger – a rate that leads to 3 to 4 dwelling units per acre.
Low density development is made possible by a variety of factors. We have few geographic and topological limits to development. We subsidize new development through collective provision of basic infrastructure such as highways, water systems, sewer systems, and utility connections. We undervalue or fail to value altogether environmental open space, air quality, water quality and high quality agricultural soils. These factors lead to a relatively low housing cost for a single-family home. Housing costs of an existing single family home in Kansas City are lower than the national average. The median sales price of an existing single family home is 78.9 percent of the US median (NAR 2017). Our housing costs might be low, but most households have to invest and maintain a car to facilitate their quality of life. Households without cars are limited either to the small parts of the metro with regular transit service or the relatively high cost taxi and car sharing services. The Center for Neighborhood Technology has produced an index that combines transportation and housing costs to create a common basis of comparison (Center for Neighborhood Technology 2017).
In the 21st Century research shows that low-density automobile dependent development is connected to issues of public health such as air pollution and obesity (Frumkin, Frank and Jackson 2004; Ewing et. Al 2014 for example). Increasing animate forms of transportation such as walking and biking requires development of complete streets that provide for these modes of transit and connect from residents and workplaces to popular destinations.
These conditions then have created a transportation problem for Kansas City. How do we increase transportation choices in Kansas City while continuing to provide quick and convenient access for most Kansas City residents who are used to auto dependence? Changes in demographics, transportation preferences and transportation technologies may also influence what will be possible in the next 20 years. How will Kansas City retrofit our current mode of development to increase transportation choice while accounting for smart transportation systems necessary for autonomous vehicles? How do retrofit for trails and bikeways? Will individual car ownership drop as we move to autonomous car share systems? How can we make mode switching and transit transfer as convenient as possible? As a part of regional transportation planning, the Mid America Regional Council has produced a transit plan — Smart Moves, 3.0 that addresses these issues. We will spend this semester addressing one aspect of this plan – the Mobility Hub.
For a whole semester, our class was studying the Main Street corridor starting with its different elements, then surveying the existing land use which led us to the final project. Each student was tasked to pick a node along the corridor to implement due to the expansion of the streetcar. Based on the studies done throughout the semester, I picked Linwood and Main.
The area of Linwood and Main suffers a great level of activity today where sadly it used to not be. Back in 1926, an apartment city used to site where the home depot parking lot is located today. This city used to hold about 500 units and was billed as “an innovative approach to multi-use residential development.” The Warner Plaza development included two seven-story buildings on Main Street near Thirty-third Street, and a roadway also called Warner Plaza with a long row of apartment buildings on either side. By the 1980’s, Warner Plaza was decaying and seen by the city as contributing to the decay of the surrounding neighborhood.
My implementation to the area was through anchoring the node to get it as much attention as the rest of the corridor. By doing that, I picked the North West block of the node and designed a Design District. This building would consist anything related to design. We’ve always wanted to have one place that holds every design store at one place. This would not only anchor Linwood, but as well bring the surrounding neighborhoods to the area with more jobs and a better pedestrian experience.
Working around the node, the apartment city is back to where it used to be with approximately 200 housing units. Based on the two week group analysis of the main corridor, Linwood suffers density. The big idea is supposed to bring it back with the beautiful history of Linwood.
The transit stops of the streetcar and the buses are located by the Main core building and the subway across from Main Street which is replaced by an office building that serves as a public area for the transit stoppers. The rest of the plan was to fill in the vacant parcels and replace the over limit of parking lots with something that would serve Linwood in a better way.
The expansion of the streetcar with the developments being talked about would bring back density Linwood used to have with better qualities of living in the area as well as making it more attractive rather than currently dead.