IBX Corridor Study

The Transportation and Land Use Program’s Interborough Express (IBX) research focuses on the land use potential along the proposed light rail corridor connecting Brooklyn and Queens. We examine Transit Oriented Development projects domestically and abroad to guide our recommendations and contextualize the existing corridor. Even though American transit agencies have limited control over land use, we believe that the scale of investment required to build this project, and similar projects across the country, underscores the need for greater coordination between municipal, state, and federal partners.

Project Phases:

1. Preliminary site analysis

First we visualize land use, density, demographic and travel behavior data available for Brooklyn and Queens, to get a sense of the existing conditions and their variance along and around the IBX right of way.

Click on images to go to the maps.

2. Transit Oriented Development (TOD) attribute analysis

Following a literature review of academic studies on TODs, we select a set of built environment attributes and compute their values for a 800 meter-radius based buffer area around every NYC subway station, along with the buffers areas around the proposed IBX stations.

We present the initial descriptive analysis of some if this data on this page. Additional indicators and analyses is forthcoming.

Our initial results can be viewed in the below table, or follow the link to the Google Spreadsheet.

3. Case Studies

We take a closer look at the population density, travel mode share and vehicle ownership over time, around some TODs in US cities.

Click on maps to see the case studies.

4. Access to jobs with multi-modal transit analysis, befor and after the IBX

Here, we utilize the UrbanAccess analysis tool to calculate the impact of IBX on the accessibility of jobs by buses and trains within 45 minutes for all the street intersections and transit nodes in  NYC. Click on image to see a larger version.

5. Street-level morphological and streetscape-attribute analysis of station areas

We utilize an urban morphological analysis method called “Convex and Solid Voids” to take a close look at the spatial characteristics of a 800 meter-wide buffer area along the corridor. This method is based on an auto-generated 3d unit, representing the urban void, delineated by the topography, buildings and other vertical boundaries such as walls, fences, hedges and gates. See Convex and Solid Voids for more detail.

Analysis results of the street-level morphological and streetscape attributes of the station areas are forthcoming.

6. TOD recommendations

We will be publishing our findings within the next few months.