RTA Critical to Downtown’s Future
’ve often written in this space that Downtown is a very small place, and that this simple fact has enormous implications for the decisions that get made about how it gets developed.
It’s so small that Tucson’s oldest residential neighborhood is located across the street from City Hall. Armory Park neighborhood is just one block away from our major east-west thoroughfare and sits astride Downtown’s major north-south artery.
Downtown is so small that you can walk across it in five minutes or so. Two shopping malls laid end-to-end over Downtown would leave one of the department stores extending beyond Downtown’s boundary. This fact is indicative of Downtown’s compact walkability, but it also challenges us to make the best use of what little land area we have.
The opportunity cost of each land-use decision is very high, and we have little margin for error. A seven-iron shot is probably the distance between the clock corner of the Ronstadt Center and the railroad tracks, so there is no room for a mulligan. And when you try to squeeze the traffic of two arterials (Broadway and Barraza-Aviation Parkway) through it, Downtown’s intimate street grid gets choked with slow-moving commuters.
People often don’t realize how close the core of Downtown is to the UA and to Fourth Avenue. The railroad tracks disguise our proximity.
Downtown is effectively shrunken further by the fact that we have several historic buildings of low height that should not only be preserved themselves, but should be surrounded by future development of compatible scale. The importance of keeping Downtown recognizable diminishes the opportunities for creating the density that is important for generating critical mass.
The point of this rehash of Downtown’s modest size is that the transportation funding opportunity known as RTA has implications for issues related to the city center’s scale. The Regional Transportation Authority plan, which will be put to the voters of Pima County on May 16, is critical to Downtown’s future, as well as the region as a whole. It is critical to Downtown because it addresses both the opportunities and the challenges of Downtown’s “smallness”.
Three significant projects in the RTA plan will impact Downtown directly, while others will certainly impact it in indirect ways. The three are the modern streetcar, the extension of Broadway-Aviation Parkway along the Stevens Avenue alignment, north of the tracks, and the widening of 22nd Street.
The modern streetcar, planned to run for four miles between UMC and the west side of Downtown, would connect major activity centers with a sleek, efficient, quiet, 21st century mode of high-capacity transit, running 20 hours a day, 7 days a week, with headways as short as 10 minutes. I borrowed these adjectives from the website of the group that is spearheading support for the RTA, “Yes!! for Regional Transportation”. The site provides a link to a very cool 3-D animation of how the modern streetcar would look snaking its way around the UA, Main Gate, 4th Avenue, and Congress St.
Check it out at www.tucsontransitstudy.com if you’re still wondering what the streetcar looks like, how big it is, how fast it moves, and how it fits in with its surroundings. The animation shows the streetcar connecting with modern, understated transit stops, moving with vehicular traffic, and powered by electricity transferred through thin overhead wires.
The Yes on 1 and 2 website says that 10% of the region’s residents live or work within walking distance of the modern streetcar line, which is a powerful argument to those critics who believe that the streetcar is just an expensive way to serve a small population. Fixed-rail transit creates interest in public transportation among those citizens who have no interest in riding the bus. By virtue of it being fixed, it creates certainty that inspires investment and development.
The best argument for the streetcar is that it will surely have huge economic development impacts. Even as you read this, developers who have invested in mixed-use, transit-oriented development in cities like Portland are scouring the Downtown Tucson area for real estate opportunities. But you can bet that much of this new-found attention is contingent on Tucson approving the funding and the plan that will bring the streetcar to fruition.
With the modern streetcar bridging that deceptively short divide between the core and the university, that distance will effectively shrink.
The extension of the Barraza-Aviation Parkway and the widening of 22nd Street will open up Downtown to those who are living, working, and visiting here, whether they are on foot, on bicycle, riding a bus or streetcar, or driving. It will open it up by giving those travelers who are not living, working or visiting Downtown to find alternate routes to connect with Stone Avenue or Oracle Road northbound, or Interstate 10.
The RTA plan gives Downtown a chance to develop at the appropriate physical scale—dense, intimate, walkable, and with the recognition that in two dimensions, Downtown is relatively small.
For more information on the RTA plan and the modern streetcar, point your browser to www.yes1and2.org. And, if you’re inclined to vote for RTA, get an early ballot and use it before May 16.
Donovan Durband
Executive Director, Tucson Downtown Alliance
From The Editor