Regulating transit oriented development for inducing transit friendly housing: a case study of Kochi

Abstract

In India, after the launching of different mission based programmes like JNNURM, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban transformation (AMRUT) and Smart Cities, public transport as a sector is considered a major quotient for development and huge investments have been made in this sector. This is anticipated to increase in future. At present the country has 11 functional Metro Rail Projects, with a total operating length of 413.05 Km. In this scenario, coordination of land-use and transport planning is the key to maintaining high mode shares by public transport, walking and cycling. Transit Oriented Development (TOD) integrates land-use and transport planning and aims to develop sustainable urban growth centres. Studies suggest that countries which have already achieved the TOD policy levels are facing various issues, criticisms and challenges. One of the most prominent ones being that it causes the actual transit users to move out of the transit zone due to high bid rent (it could be considered as State Aided Gentrification). Examples of Bogota’s TransMilenio, Mexico’s Metro bus, Delhi metro rail, etc. suggests that the largest portion of the transit users are in the lower and middle income groups. Therefore there is a need to facilitate the actual transit users to stay near the transit corridor, to improve transit ridership. The benefits of the Mixed-Income TOD would have a combined benefit of TOD and Mixed-income neighbourhoods. In India, DDA has prepared TOD Policy for New Delhi, which mentions minimum housing mix criteria by unit size. It states a minimum 15% of FAR for all TOD projects to be allocated to rental or for-sale housing with unit sizes no larger than 25sqm (UTTIPEC, 2012). Every city is unique in terms of its context, public transport utilisation and the socio economic character of its people. Therefore it is essential to arrive at the minimum dwelling unit area, with respect to each city. A blanket rule for all the cities regarding the minimum area of the dwelling units would not be beneficial in accomplishing the task of increasing transit ridership through Transit Oriented Development. The aim of the study is to assess the link between mode choice and housing typology to achieve transit supportive housing in the Transit Oriented Development, for the city of Kochi.