Does Light Rail Make Sense for Louisville?
Many local urbanists have fantasized about light rail in Louisville for years, is it feasible?
Light rail has been having a bit of a come back over the past few years. Many cities have begun embracing some kind of streetcar system, at least within their downtown. Cincinnati’s streetcar system has been seeing consistent increases in ridership and calls for expansion. Even more auto-centric cities such as Oklahoma City and Tampa have seen a good amount of success with their streetcars. Louisville is bucking the trend when it comes to embracing this form of transit.
Louisville last seriously investigated light rail in Louisville over 20 years ago in 2002. Since then, the possibility has largely dissapeared outside of a Broken Sidewalk article in 2002. TARC no longer has a webpage dedicated to possibilities of light rail, and the 2002 T2 plan has seemingly been wiped from the internet. Despite a lackluster history, I think it is still worth looking into the possibilities of light rail, even just as a thought experiment.
The biggest barrier with most transit like this will be density. Generally, transit that requires permanent infrastructure to support itself also requires higher density to justify its existence. It is a bit of a chicken and the egg situation, though. Efficient transit can play a massive role in increasing density, but many will find it wasteful to build transit somewhere without the existing density to support it.
Louisville is a very sprawled-out city, so density will be hard to come by, but its not non-existent. Public transit consultant and author Jarrett Walker (who’s firm is leading the TARC network redesign) highlights the importance of density around transit stops rather than in the city as a whole. If you can construct a line that goes through all the dense areas and provides access to needed amenities and jobs, you will likely have high ridership regardless of the general sprawled-nature of a city.
There are three important indicators in this regard: population density, daytime population density, and proximity to amenities. Population density represents the density of people living in an area while daytime population density represents the amount of people in an area during working hours. These two factors are easy to map and analyze, proximity to amenities is generally only easy to analyze when you have a general idea of where a route would be going.
The biggest conglomeration of dense neighborhoods lies around the University of Louisville Belknap Campus. This is where you see population levels that are similar to that of areas around light rail in some other cities, so any theoretical light rail line would have to run through here.
Daytime population density is just as important, since it tells you where people go are working. Despite a smaller permanent population, downtown and the Butchertown area see very high daytime populations driven by downtown offices and the medical district. This puts many of the areas with the densest permanent population and daytime population right next to each other, which is quite ideal for a light rail line.
This line would essentially serve the same area as the TARC 4 bus, although it could be diverted to serve the airport as well rather than going to Outer Loop or Glengary. This was part of the plan in the original T2 proposal, although it went a bit further out.
There is no well-established “threshold” for density required to support light rail, but Old Louisville, Downtown, SoBro, and the University area basically form a perfect line of dense neighborhoods that would be optimal. Downtown and SoBro also have a significant amount of vacant land that could be turned into transit-oriented development.
A line going through these neighborhoods would connect critical job centers and residents, but it would also connect to important amenities. A light rail line following a similar trajectory to the 4 bus would also stop at the Kroger on Central, multiple gyms, coffee shops, restaurants, and more. This set of neighborhoods has the critical mass that could justify a light rail line, there are also corridors such as Preston Highway and Bardstown Road that have a decent amount of density and opportunities for more.
Outside of density, walkability is a significant factor. Usually density and walkability go hand in hand, but this sometimes isn’t the case in auto-centric cities. Luckily for Louisville, our most walkable areas also tend to be the most dense, at least for residential density. Old Louisville and SoBro largely follow traditional neighborhood patterns, with corner stores and tight roadways creating a walkable environment (with some exceptions). The University/UofL area is also incredibly walkable since it is a college campus design to be navigated by car-free students. This means we do have some dense, important, walkable areas basically in a straight line, which is ideal for light rail or any form higher frequency transit.
Maybe we can, but should we?
I think there is a strong argument to be made that Louisville has the chops to support light rail, but does that mean we should? Regardless of TARC’s impending fiscal cliff, there are some transit-related concerns. Louisville does not even run a proper Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line; Dixie Highway technically has one but without dedicated lanes, raised platforms, higher frequency, etc., it is not even considered BRT by many international standards. I am not sure it makes sense for us to try to conquer the light rail mountain until we can climb over the BRT hill.
Other cities that have implemented streetcars have also had BRT lines before-hand. These can also provide critical connects to any new light rail. These rapid bus lines can also act as trials for light rail, and cost significantly less. If a high-frequency bus line fills up constantly, that may be your sign light rail is needed.
BRT also allows the creation of some semblance of permanent infrastructure. Louisville has no transit-oriented development largely because it has no fixed transit infrastructure. No one is going to build that without some kind of guarantee a transit line will be there in a few years. BRT can get the ball rolling on this, and light rail can come in for the kill down the line.
A lack of light rail and BRT puts Louisville pretty far behind our peer cities. Any progress we make over the coming years will likely just be catch-up. This may make some argue that light rail is necessary to try and close the gap rather than constantly be chasing our peer’s coattails. This is a valid argument, but this would require an extreme amount of political capital, and if it fails to meet expectations (which is very possible if we cannot even manage our current bus routes), we may slide even further backwards.
Louisville generally is pretty risk-averse with public investment on transit, so while a light rail line would be great as a biased urbanist, A bus rapid transit line would likely be significantly more feasible. Currently, Broadway all the Way is our best hope for BRT. Dedicated bus lanes are expected in this plan, and Broadway contains the most-used bus route in the city. Hopefully this can act as a catalyst that shows the value of rapid transit with dedicated infrastructure, but this plan also may not be implemented for a decade or so which would just put us even further behind our peer cities.