Ann Arbor mixes land use, transit with new plan

Transportation plans for cities (if they even have one) deal with the nuts and bolts of getting people from Point A to Point B and back again. Most of that plan focuses on how to achieve those goals with automobiles, and sometimes buses. Not in Ann Arbor.Tree Town is evolving its thinking of transportation to include not just traditional transportation issues, such as bus routes, but land-use strategies. The idea is that both issues are intricately intertwined in one big circle of city life.”We can’t merely look at our transportation system without looking at the land use that generates the travel demand,” says Eli Cooper, transportation program manager at the city of Ann Arbor.Ann Arbor’s transportation plan hasn’t been updated in almost 20 years. Back then it was considered progressive because it included consideration for things like pedestrians and bicycles while most other plans focused solely on cars. The new plans incorporates those same ideas, but it also recognizes that having a car in a place like downtown can be more of an impediment to transportation than say walking. That of course wouldn’t hold true on the city’s edges where cars dominate the landscape, such as the West Stadium Boulevard business corridor. Source: Eli Cooper, transportation program manager at the city of Ann Arbor and the city of Ann ArborWriter: Jon Zemke