Designing the High-Speed Future

[marmar]

from the Next American City blog:




Designing the High-Speed Future
Frank Fuller | Mar 19th, 2011



A rendering of Diridon Station in San Jose, California, as envisioned by the California High-Speed Rail Authority. Credit: California High-Speed Rail Authority


Much of the controversy over high-speed rail in the United States has been centering on where to put it and who will accept it. Most recently, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida spurned over $3 billion in federal funds for the development of high-speed rail. Closer to home, opposition to California’s high-speed rail system from a number of cities on the San Francisco peninsula contributed to the decision to lay the first tracks in the Central Valley. The first phase of California high-speed rail line is currently planned to connect Madera, Fresno, and Bakersfield, rather than link cities along a corridor that has a high population density—such as San Jose to San Francisco or Anaheim to Los Angeles.


The Porta Nuova development as envisioned by 2015 is close to the renovated Milan Central Station. Image from Skymino.

High-speed rail is essential infrastructure that this country needs in order to remain competitive in the global marketplace. Redundancy and speed in our transportation network is important not only for handling national emergencies, as we proved with our national highway system in the 1950s and 60s, but also for remaining competitive in our world economy. Europe and Asia are already considerably ahead of us. As California continues to progress with its own high-speed rail plans, one question that we need to address is this: what should transit-oriented development (TOD) around high-speed rail train stations look like in the United States?


The new Berlin Central Station includes several levels of platforms, shops and offices. It serves 300,000 passengers daily. Image courtesy of Deutsche Bahn AG.

First, a TOD around a high-speed rail station will not be like development around conventional transit nodes, such as light and heavy rail stations. Buildings will likely be bigger, taller, and denser, and the area of walkability around stations will be at least one half mile. Second, unlike development surrounding airports, new construction around high-speed rail stations will need to fit into the existing city fabric, with area plans for new mixed-use development and strong connections to a variety of public transit modes. Minimizing automobile use in the immediate vicinity of the station will be essential, both for driving and parking. In order to find models that we can adapt for U.S. situations, we need to look overseas. Following are a few examples.

Berlin’s Central Station provides an example of how to fit a brand-new station into existing and new urban fabric. Designed by von Gerkan, Marg and Partners and completed in 2006, the station occupies the former border between East and West Germany, and its huge glass hall is intended to represent the government’s post-Berlin Wall openness and transparency. With a population of 5 million people in the greater metropolitan area, the station serves about 350,000 passengers per day and has 860 underground parking spaces. The station has many uses on several levels, creating connections to the city, the station plaza, and the Spree River. New development within a mile of the station includes retail, office, and hotel uses in the 4.3-acre Station Quarter. In addition, there is the 40-acre master-planned EuropaCity to the north of the station, which is the result of a competition and is being developed by a public-private partnership. The six neighborhoods of EuropaCity will include 6.5 million square feet of residential, office, retail, and cultural uses. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://americancity.org/buzz/entry/2937/