When form follows function - industrial design

Railway Age, August, 2002 by William C. Vantuono

RELATED ARTICLE: "It works even without the trains"

Good design does not stop at the vehicle level. "Transit-oriented development" is gaining momentum in many U.S. cities. "Primarily, it involves using rail transit as a means to give a community a sense of place," says Jeffrey A. Warsh, the former Executive Director of New Jersey Transit who is now a partner in The Strategy Group, a Trenton, N.J. based consulting firm. Warsh points to firms like Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects PC of New York City and Clarke Caton Hintz of West Trenton, NJ., which are the design and engineering minds behind concepts like transit villages.

"The idea is to make transit a first-class experience," says EE&K Principal Stanton Eckstut, FAIA, who says this can be accomplished through a change in thinking from "pure transportation design" to "city and street design where transit is a seamless part of the environment" and not perceived as an intrusion or a barrier. "The true measure of the quality of a transit environment is whether it's used or admired when there is no train present," he says. "The design must work, even without the trains."

The light rail system under construction in Houston, Tex., is an excellent example of transit-oriented development. Working closely with its client, the Central Houston Community Development District, and the Houston Metropolitan Transit Authority, EE&K designed Houston Main Street Square (above), a three-block-long "civic room" that integrates the LRT system being built in the city's Main Street Corridor. The two flanking blocks, which contain station platforms, are partially closed to vehicular traffic, and invite pedestrian activity with bold paving patterns, shaded seating areas, and rich landscape motifs. A "choreographed water feature" composed of arched water jets activated by the motion of passing LRVs is the focal point of the center block. Smaller jets animate the fountain in between trains. The fountain "carries forth the tradition of water features in Houston that symbolically connect the city to the surrounding bayous," says Eckstut. "The square represents an effort to celebrate pedestrian life, and the LRT is as much a street design as a transportation design." The EE&K project team for Main Street Square includes Lori Andreini, Vincent Martineau, Josh Keay, and Vaughan Davies. Waterscape Consultants of Houston, Tex., designed the water feature.

In New Jersey, CCH and EE&K are on all four of the short-listed teams (Washington Group International, Parsons Brinckerhoff, DMJM Harris/Edwards and Kelcey, and Langan Engineering) competing for $3 million in flexed federal highway funds to design a transit village at Military Ocean Terminal Bayonne, the largest single piece of undeveloped property in New York Harbor. A low-cost LRT using refurbished PCC cars linking a new passenger ferry terminal with NJ Transit's Hudson-Bergen LRT at 34th Street in Bayonne, NJ., is envisioned as the centerpiece of 18 million square feet of residential and commercial space.