Castro Valley BART station, surrounded by parking and low-rise residential. Zoning such low densities around rapid transit is no longer legal under SB 79.
OK, the headline is a little exaggerated, but California’s Senate Bill 79, authored by Senator Scott Wiener and just signed by Governor Newsom, is a game-changer. It prohibits most cities from forbidding dense development near rapid transit stations.
All over America, we have built rapid transit systems and then allowed local governments to prohibit dense development around their stations, thus limiting how many people can take advantage of the transit service. The result is not just a crisis of affordable housing but one of affordable living. Not owning a car can be liberating, for a lower-income person especially, but only if they are allowed to live in a place where public transit gives them ample access to opportunity.
For much of the late 20th century, the solution to low income housing was dense developments on cul-de-sacs nowhere near anything. This development pattern assumed that everyone would need a car, thus impoverishing the residents further. Because not everyone in those developments had cars, transit agencies were then forced to run inefficient services to these places that were designed without transit in mind. We deal with this problem in almost every US network redesign we work on.
SB 79 overrides local zoning just in the areas around rapid transit stations (rail or high-end Bus Rapid Transit). This is not nearly enough places, and it’s not all the places where transit can provide for a liberated life without cars. But it’s a start. If you want to dig into the details, I’d start with this writeup at M. Nolan Gray’s blog, Arbitrary Lines.
SB 79 passed the Legislature by the narrowest of margins. The City of Los Angeles formally opposed it. It cleaved the Democratic Party’s activists from some of its more self-interested donors. And it has some wild exceptions: cities below 35,000 population (read: Beverly Hills) and counties with fewer than 15 rail stations (read: Contra Costa County). The legislative process is never neat, and usually has some of these indefensible exceptions. But that doesn’t change the fact that a real line has been crossed and a new way of thinking about our public transit resources is becoming essential.
Is SB 79 all good news? No, it’s bad news that it was necessary. It’s bad news that in the midst of a historic crisis of homelessness and housing affordability, so many California local governments were still happy to wring their hands and demand that the problem be solved somewhere else. I support the right of local communities to express their own values in their governance. But when values harden into denial about an urgent crisis of housing and affordable living, the state must step in, and it has.
Do you think that bills like this may cause people to be more vocal in asking transit agencies to close stops, reduce service, or object to new transit service for fear of increased density?
Vanessa, I think it’s inevitable. This is already spawning a backlash in cities of all sizes throughout California. Reactionaries intuitively understand what author John Ganz, calling back to the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, writes about civil society itself being the terrain of battle.
Reactionaries will channel their fear of density, personified as bus and train systems as the threat.
Unfortunately this is almost a given. Areas that pushed for the “15 stations per county” amendment will certainly try to prevent new stations that would put them over the threshold. In some ways this “Transit Oriented Development” is the wrong approach. Vancouver is famous for really tall buildings at Skytrain stops – but the sea of single family homes surrounding them means Vancouver has seen skyrocketing housing costs, while Montreal, which allows 4-5 story buildings basically everywhere, has not. San Francisco made this deal in the 70s when it allowed high rise offices downtown in exchange for down zoning the rest of the city, and we all know how that worked out. Seattle made the same deal with its “urban villages” and is heading down the same path. The “West Coast Compromise” model of housing is a failure. Affordability comes not from height or super high spot density but adequate supply to meet demand and average density. The best way to achieve this has traditionally been easy and widespread mid rise development. New York City was affordable when zoning allowed New Law tenements up to six stories basically everywhere – when the 1961 zoning law prevented this NYC began to see rents rise. Sen Wiener would have had greater impact getting 3-4 story buildings with no setbacks or limits on units everywhere (row houses, flats, garden apartments), rather than pushing for 9 story buildings at transit stops.
I was without a vehicle for 7 years while living in LA. Altho I wasn’t homeless ( close to it a couple of times, but for the grace of a friend named Doug who let me stay on his sailboat) I did find that the transit system was a valuable means of getting to what I needed to live life. I saw then, and see now, the need for people who are homeless to be able to access the transit system without the monumental effort it takes to get around when one is in that position. I think we, myself included, the housed, take our situation for granted and look at these “other” human beings who happen to be homeless as less deserving of the same amenities we enjoy. I’m glad this law has been passed, cutouts not withstanding. Thanks for addressing this important issue.
Why would local governments want to restrict increased housing density near transit stations? It seems like a no-brainer to house more people close to transit.
Because Americans reflexively think that more people means more problems with no upside. Which is actually pretty true in suburbia. But in properly urban places, it just means more vitality. But so few people even know what that’s like anymore.
This is good is a long time public transit rider I noticed years ago that there was a lack of development around train stations. I live in Southern California and take the Metrolink from Lancaster to La often and when you get off the train there’s no stores there’s nothing around the train stations which make it hard. Even in downtown Los Angeles there’s really no stores around the area and if you want to find somewhere to eat you often have to travel away from the station.
What is the definition of high end bis stops
My “favorite” current example is the North Berkeley BART station: https://maps.app.goo.gl/D28f25RritqNjfXWA
That’ll be amazing if there can be a new cluster of 8 story apartment buildings on top of a transit station in the middle of that nice greenway.
It’s the homelessness to mass transit pipeline. And a lot of people to beg for spare change andto victimize criminally.
What a wonderful concept!
SB79 *does* apply within a half-mile, but the height standards are ten feet lower than within a quarter-mile of the same stations – 75 vs. 65 for Tier 1, 65 vs. 55 for Tier 2.
Just another situation where the state cones in and tells cotoes what they can do. Funny though, when the Federal Government tries to tell the states what to do they cry “independent states rights” just another instance of hypocrisy from this state government and one of its leading cognitively challenged members
Funny, I took a masters level sociotechnical class at UW-Madison and people laughed at me in the 1980s on logic to transit. Then I voted on the high speed rail project in 2008-09- proposal was along coast in high density areas, having existing easements and annex rights but politics tossed it into the central valley without voter approval. Watch this AB go south and California is done.
Caroline, the Central Valley alignment was what was presented for the CAHSR vote in 2008. The coast was never considered. The eventual L.A.-San Diego line was never going to be along the I-5 parallel LOSSAN/Pacific Surfliner route. The farthest south the train would have gone was Anaheim. The San Diego route was going to go inland along I-15.
It might be necessary because of landslines and shifting land around San Clemente that has forced constant closures of the corridor.
I hope that it literally means near actual transit stations. I would hate to see my pleasant neighborhood if single family dwellings turned into a stucco canyon lined with prison blocks with Juliette balconies because there is a bus stop in the corner
You’re the problem, Howard. All the homeless people on the streets? That’s your fault. Move to Santa Clarita or something if you don’t want to live in a big city.
So you are afraid of your area becoming a livable area instead of a desert of empty roads and lonly people in boring dusty houses?
Has anyone considered the health issue living next transportation stations.
Yes. There is the danger that people become healthyer because of walking more and driving less by car. There is also the danger that they become more healthy in mind because of regular social contacts.
Can someone tell me what reason dense building was s illegal in transit areas? Why did California do that? Do they want to make the poor not have easy access for some reason??? Make them spend on cars and gas instead? They can’t afford it anyway. Is it to discourage homelessness? Hasn’t made a difference. Is it to raise property values? Doesn’t look like that worked. Is it to undermine public transportation? Why? racism perhaps? There must be a reason for why they did that for so long. Nothing they do makes sense.
Your analysis both undersells and oversells the nature of SB 79.
On the undersell, as Chance Boreczky noted the law does affect zoning up to a half mile from stops, however, with graduated heights going from next to the station, then within 1/4 mile, and then within half a mile. The allowed heights are further graduated by the type of transit stop: Tier 1 heavy rail like BART or LA Metro is higher than Tier 2 stations (light rail).
The huge oversell, however, is that these zoning expansions do not apply “in California”. They only apply to 8 “urban transit counties”. These 8 counties (two in LA, four in the Bay Area, plus San Diego and Sacramento) represent the existing high density urban fabric of the state – sort of. You highlight the Castro Valley BART station, but just a few miles away in Contra Costa county fully one quarter of all BART stations will not have enhanced zoning, an enormous loss given that 1.2million people live there and Richmond and Walnut Creek/Concord are every bit as urban as places like Oakland. The inland empire (San Bernardino and Riverside counties) with 4.7M people is larger than metro Seattle, Detroit or Minneapolis, even larger than metro San Diego or the core metro area of San Francisco – yet SB79 does not apply because the two counties do not have 15 train stations each. The Central Valley cities (including Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton) have about 4M people, and are the few urban areas in the state to experience population growth because they are more affordable than the coast – but again SB 79 will not apply to enhance that affordability. Even in the 8 counties, the law does apply outside of incorporated areas until 2031.
None of this is to say that the law is bad, just that it hardly legalizes dense development at rapid transit stations. The vast majority of the state, including many rapid transit stations, sees no changes, even though the kind of mid rise development the law allows (5-9 stories) is a recipe for affordability and would benefit areas across the state, including areas just with bus service.
Even in Sacramento, what would be the point?
Sacramento does have a light rail system, but the services are infrequent (30 minute service on weekends before 10 a.m. and after 7 p.m.) and there is not too much redevelopment opportunity around what there is. The north leg of the Blue Line runs in the middle of I-80, and the south leg of the Blue Line and Gold Line reclaimed freight rights of way. The downtown part where the train lines converge and snake on streets (in mixed flow traffic!) already have office buildings and apartments in place.
The southern Blue and Gold already serve residential areas. They are single family residences, but the homes are not themselves large. A bigger issue is that the light rail platforms are out of the way and the street grid (as well as barriers to the rail right of way) cut off pedestrian desire paths.