Streetcar suburbs: how they were designed and what we can learn from them

When we talk of "suburbs", the first  thought that comes to mind is the typical sprawl development of single-family homes with use separation, with jobs segregated in industrial parks and shops in strip malls surrounded by lots of parking. A bit like this:

"Typical" suburb

In many ways, "suburbs" has become synonymous in North America with "sprawl". It's implied that this is an area that is car-dependent, where getting around any other way is hard, if not downright impossible.

Yet, that wasn't always the case. "Suburb" just means a built area that is close to an urban one and which is dependent on that center. Nothing forces suburbs to actually be car-dependent sprawl. In fact, the first suburbs of the late 19th century, early 20th century were quite different.

Streetcar suburbs: the first and most successful TOD

"Streetcar suburb" is the name reserved for the suburbs built in the late 19th century, early 20th century around streetcar lines. The streetcar lines were the main connection between these suburbs and the urban area they were attached to. Sometimes, the streetcar companies were deeply involved in the construction of the suburbs themselves, they would buy land that had little value on the outskirts of cities, then build a streetcar line through them. The streetcar would highly increase the desirability of the area and increase the value of the land. The streetcar company would then either divide the land and sell the lots at much higher prices than they paid or build the real estate themselves and sell or rent it.

This is what is called "value capture" and it was a major way streetcar and rail companies would fund themselves in the "old days". Many of these companies would actually be created by real estate giants, just to feed their main estate activities. Electricity companies would also be involved, resulting in huge companies that had many activities feeding each other, the very definition of synergy. Estate companies would build streetcar lines to build more real estate around them, they'd build power plants later on to run electric streetcars and sell the excess electricity to consumers. When antitrust regulations broke up these huge synergistic conglomerates, streetcar lines, that had been subsidized to feed value onto real estate activities, would struggle to survive, especially as fares were kept low by political pressure.

Anyway, the design of streetcar suburbs should be of high interest to anyone interested in TOD today, because these were some of the best transit-oriented development cases in history.  The resulting neighborhoods were highly walkable and had high density (but not as high as earlier urban cores) and often still had places for greenery and parks. Though streetcar lines are gone, many of these still remain highly desirable locations in North American cities and their design still favors walking and transit over cars... unless they have been "urban renewed" into oblivion.

Example of streetcar suburb: Plateau-Mont-Royal

The Plateau-Mont-Royal is a borough in Montréal which is often referred to as the crown jewel of urbanism of Montréal and/or an haven of dirty hippies anti-car crusaders, depending on whom you ask. 

Plateau Mont-Royal

 Some key data:

• Population: a bit over 100 000 people
• Land area: 8,1 square kilometers (3,2 square miles)
• Population density: 12 000 people per square kilometer, 31 000 per square mile (though in residential areas, it can get as high as 20 000 people per square kilometer, around 50 000 per square mile)
• Mode share overall: Car 34%, transit 28%, active transport (walking and biking) 38%
• Internal trip mode share (for trips inside the Plateau itself): Car 23%, transit 6%, active transport 71%

A commercial arterial of the Plateau in winter

Residential street of the Plateau, full of multiplexes

Plateau seen from the air

This neighborhood was essentially all built after streetcar lines came in the early 20th century, and there were quite a few of them.

Streetcar lines of the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough at their peak

But what's important is more than just the density or the presence of transit lines. The design of the neighborhood reveals what is, I believe, the foundation of good, strong TOD development.

All trips tend to be made of two locations, an origin and a destination. Though one can certainly point out how an A->B trip tends to be balanced by a B->A trip and that A and B are both respectively origins and destinations, I think in reality, that's not quite correct. The origin of trips is generally people's homes, where they live. The destinations are where they go to do certain activities, be it working, shopping or any other activity worth moving for.

A lot of times, when TODs are discussed, people simply think of high density housing around transit stops, but I think the Plateau reveals something about the ideal location of residential areas (origins) and stores, restaurants, workplaces, etc... (destinations).

Streetcar lines superposed on a Google Maps search for "stores"

In the previous image, I searched for "stores" on Google Maps, which is able to give us an interesting insight about where stores are mainly located in relation to the streetcar lines. Note how they superpose almost perfectly. Indeed, streetcar lines were not located next to high-density residential areas, but next to stores and restaurants, with high-density housing a bit further out.

This makes a lot of sense as destinations, stores, workplaces, etc... generate more trips per square foot than housing does, so by putting them next to transit lines, you optimize the urban design to reduce distances for the most amount of people. People just need to walk to the transit line, then they can reach their destinations with minimal walking after they get off the vehicle. It also reduces traffic and activities in residential areas, preserving calm and tranquility in areas away from the main streets.

The Avenue Mont-Royal street is probably the most efficient design. Blocs in the areas are elongated rectangles rather than squares, and around the Avenue Mont-Royal, the elongated blocs' longer sides are perpendicular to the  streetcar line. What it means is that there is no detour required for pedestrians, the commercial avenue is right down the street, wherever they live in the neighborhood.

Avenue Mont-Royal, the red line is the old streetcar line, the orange area is commercial, the green is residential

A schematic view of the previous, with arrows showing direct access without detour to the commercial avenue

Now this design is great for pedestrians, but horrible for cars, because it results in an enormous amount of intersections, stops and traffic lights on the commercial avenue itself. When streetcars reigned, there was little to no traffic on the side streets, so they could go quickly down the avenue regardless of the intersections, but when cars became the major mode of transport, the design imposed was quite different, as it became important to reduce the number of intersections on the main commercial arterial.

Now let's look at a car-oriented commercial boulevard design in contrast:

Car-oriented boulevard Taschereau in Longueuil, notice the detours required of a pedestrian from point A to reach a destination on the boulevard and the few intersections on it.

The street grid of this area results in few intersections on the main street, but also in detours required for residents in the area to get to it. The objective is to speed traffic on the boulevard and also to avoid traffic on residential streets (though if streets were in a grid, the traffic would be fragmented and not be bad on any street as there are many alternatives to get to the main street). This design is all about favoring vehicular speed even if it increases distances.

What lessons to remember about streetcar suburbs

It is vital to take from this successful TOD design that housing, no matter how dense, shouldn't have the priority of the area around transit stations or stops. Priority should be given to commercial areas and to workplaces, with high-density housing a bit further out, but still within walking distance. This maximizes the efficiency of transit by increasing the number of trips that can start and end very close to transit stops since commercial areas and workplaces generate a lot more trips per square foot of floor area than homes. For instance, there may be 1 person per 40 to 50 square meters in homes (400 to 500 square feet), but in workplaces, it's not rare to have one worker per 8 or 9 square meters of floor space in office (80 to 90 square feet) if not less in open office designs. That's 5 or 6 times as many people for a same floor area, and thus likely up to 5 or 6 times as many trips.

An highly porous street grid is also a good complement to transit lines as it reduces distances to reach the line and commercial areas. This reduces the need for feeder lines and makes active trips (walking, biking) complementary with the transit lines. No one wants to be taking a bus or streetcar to get a carton of milk. Commercial and residential areas therefore need to be close together, you don't even need to technically "mix" them, you can have use segregation and still have an efficient neighborhood, as long as the uses are close to each other.

Can we replicate streetcar suburbs today?

The coming of the car has changed transit a lot. One of the reasons why streetcars failed in the end (and why mixed traffic transit as a whole struggles in modern cities) was that cars and mass motorization would create congestion on streets even far from downtown. It would also lead to traffic lights and stops, all of which slowed down streetcars significantly. Even as technology got better and streetcars got better acceleration and braking, the interference from cars and the traffic signals made the lines slower and slower, making transit less attractive to riders and more expensive to run. The slower transit is, the more vehicles and drivers you need to offer the same frequency, and thus capacity.

Not only that, but families are much smaller today, so there are less people per households than there used to be, reducing residential density. Most of the loss of population of cities since WWII is due to smaller households, not loss of housing. This means that distances traveled will likely be higher than in the past, even if the old neighborhoods remained intact.

Combine the reduced density and the slower speed of mixed traffic transit and it's clear that streetcar suburbs can't be built like they were in the past. The best bet now is in rapid transit (subways, trains on a separate grade from traffic) or semi-rapid transit (BRT and light rail on their own right-of-way but at-grade alongside pedestrian and vehicular traffic). These allow higher speeds to be reached, 30-40 km/h (20-26 mph) for rapid transit and 20 km/h (12-13 mph) for semi-rapid transit which can compensate for the lower density of modern cities. However, these forms of transit have less stops than old streetcars did, so it means that we need to compensate with much higher buildings and higher densities at the transit stops, since there are a lot less of them now.

Vertical streetcar suburbs

Another option is to create what I call "vertical streetcar suburb". What are they? Essentially, take the commercial buildings and the residential buildings on the side streets and rotate them 90 degrees to get the residential buildings over the commercial buildings.

Old-fashioned streetcar suburb

A vertical streetcar suburb with residential buildings flipped 90 degrees and put over commercial buildings

What is called "Vancouverism" would be the best example of a "vertical streetcar suburb", with commercial bases and high-rise residential areas over them.

Vancouverism: high-rise residential building standing on a commercial base flanking the street