Light Rail

Dena Belzer – Economics of Building Around Light Rail

By: Chris Harpstrite

Today, February 06, I attended a luncheon in St. Louis at the Hilton Hotel hosted by Citizens for Modern Transit. The luncheon brought in Transit Oriented Development expert Dena Belzer, from Berkely, California. Her hour presentation discussed the economical side of building around light rail and some of the benefits of doing and also some of the hardships of trying to get it done.
            

She discussed St. Louis’s economy and some of the challenges we in particular face. Some of these are: St. Louis is in a slow growth region and how local governments around the state are currently in a fiscal crisis themselves. But she also discussed how trends in America are looking up and how these trends potentially positively affect transit oriented development around the nation. Currently, almost half of the households in the nation are single, and most of those are single women. There is also almost 76 million baby boomers in the nation and 75-80 million mellenials. All these groups are the primary users of mass transit and transit oriented development properties.
           

Dena also spoke about the benefits of transit oriented development in communities. There is a consumer saving from being able to ditch one or more of their vehicles, and of course there is an environmental benefit. Bust most importantly from a city point of view, it is very efficient land use.

Overall I thought it was a great lecture and I really learned a lot. CMT tries to do a lecture like this every couple months, so hopefully I will be able to make it to another one soon.