The cities of Tucson and South Tucson are seeking comments from the community on the early stages of a strategic plan for a transit line connecting Tucson International Airport and the Tucson Mall through downtown.
Residents have until Feb. 15 to offer their input on the draft report from Phase I of the planning process.
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Plans for the future, 15-mile-long, north-south corridor known as Tucson Norte-Sur focus not only on transit but on walkability, housing density and affordability in the neighborhoods up to a mile on either side of the route.
This marks the city’s first large-scale foray into what’s known as Equitable Transit-Oriented Development (or eTOD for short), a proactive approach to transportation planning that also seeks to address housing equity.
The focus on equitability helps ensure that a development serves the needs of existing residents, particularly those most vulnerable, and safeguards against their displacement. Cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Vancouver, Washington, have adopted similar principles through grant programs and voter-approved measures.
The pandemic magnified the need to prioritize affordable housing within the plan, said Ian Sansom, eTOD project manager with the city . As a result, the grant that’s helping to pay for the work was adjusted to reflect the urgency.
Cities around the country are experiencing an affordable housing crisis following the pandemic, and the Tucson Norte-Sur plan is hoping to get ahead of this, Sansom said.
While the Tucson Norte-Sur plan cannot dictate what type of investment will come to the corridor, planners have been working with the city’s Housing and Community Development Department to explore what tools are available to curb a resulting rise in rent and property costs. Purchasing land within the corridor is one possible option.
Rapid transit
Move Tucson, Tucson’s city-wide transportation master plan, identified the Tucson Norte-Sur corridor as a priority for high-capacity transit, with options including more buses, a streetcar or even light rail.
The transit line would connect the Tohono Tadai Transit Center at the Tucson Mall to the Ronstadt Transit Center and the Amtrak Station downtown, then extend south from there to the airport. Construction could be as much as a decade away, but the project would directly link the city’s southside and northside via rapid transit for the first time.
Beyond improved mobility, the strategic plan for the corridor needs to prioritize rent stabilization and other economic initiatives that protect and empower existing small business owners in the study area, according to Selina Barajas, a South Tucson native and lead community ambassador for the plan . She noted that a high percentage of South Tucson residents pay rent, whether it’s commercial or residential.
Community engagement efforts so far show community members are most interested in fast, reliable public transportation, walkability and bike-ability, housing affordability and issues of gentrification and displacement.
Though the Tucson Norte-Sur website explicitly states that the eTOD planning process will not determine the specific type of transit to be used, Sansom said rapid is the operative word. Whether by bus or by rail, he said, that means transit-only lanes, real-time arrival, express lines and fewer stops.
Barajas compared Oracle Road and other long streets in the study area to veins of the city. Some of the bus routes there — the 18 bus that goes down Oracle, as well as the 16 and the 19 — already have some of the highest ridership in Tucson.
The draft report for Phase I of the Tucson Norte-Sur planning effort is over 100 pages long, and Sansom acknowledged that it can be difficult to get residents to engage with a document of this size and detail.
“One of the biggest challenges is distilling it down so that it is relatable to a broad group of people, because we want to make it interesting and understandable,” he said. “I think our goal is to try and do that in the executive summary and to have visuals. You could use the table of contents to focus on what you’re interested in.”
Outreach ongoing
Sansom said the team has already collected vast amounts of data and feedback, thanks to more than a dozen community ambassadors who completed approximately 150 hours of outreach within the study area neighborhoods.
That’s been one unique aspect of Tucson Norte-Sur’s engagement strategy so far: Instead of inviting community members to a few open houses at central locations, the planning team has actively come to them.
Because many of the ambassadors actually live in the study area, they know where to find residents and what topics might be important to them. And to reach as many different people as possible, the community ambassadors canvassed 70 small businesses, organized community conversations and staged pop-up outreach events in high foot-traffic areas.
And the outreach is far from over.
Barajas said she wants to have more conversations about the “e” in eTOD. It’s important to understand how the community defines equitable, especially in parts of Tucson and South Tucson that historically have experienced divestment.
By having an honest dialogue with people — not just collecting census data from them — she hopes community members along the transit corridor can have their voices heard and prioritized on topics such as rising rents and gentrification.
She said it is crucial for residents and business owners to provide their input before the real planning starts. They need to have a seat at the table.
“I want to see this community thrive, fully thrive with ownership. Not everybody has enough equity to purchase property, but they are still stakeholders and should guide the narrative,” Barajas said. “It has to be the community that speaks for these streets. So let’s hear their concerns, figure out a solution and leverage our options and opportunities.”
Eva-Marie Hube is a Univeristy of Arizona journalism student apprenticing with The Arizona Daily Star.