What Would Happen if Transit Agency Put A Garage Lot 3 Blocks from a Metro or Light Rail Station?

There is this thing in North America called a Park and Ride. Basically, it's a parking lot that surrounds a train or metro station. They tend to be popular among the West Coast. Usually, parking is paid so the transit agency can put that money to some use, but a substantial minority offer free parking for anyone who rides.

[Denver’s Transit System is Problematic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl9QR-6DLcA)

The use case for these stations is allowing people to drive close to a city, get on the rail, and then get to work which is often in the core. The problem is that a large parking lot is not too useful for transit riders who don't have a car. This is a key type of rider for the system. They are best served by high frequency service to stations within walking distance of places to go, not by park and rides.

In most cities, these stations do not form the bulk of the stops. For example, Chicago's L operated by the CTA, New York City, MTA, Toronto's system by the TTC, and Boston's MBTA have the number of frequent rail lines outnumber the park and ride stations. And even these park and ride stops usually have the parking lot only in one direction. So if you can imagine getting off the station and looking 360 degrees, 90 of it is taking up by a parking lot and you can walk in other directions. It could be a nature park, some apartments, a suburban neighborhood, restaurants, or whatever the locals built.

For RTD they built a lot of park and rides. The example he showed in the video was Thornton & 88th where there was a neighborhood nearby and they built the platform facing away from the neighborhood. There was so much potential since the rolling stock is modern and the frequency is above average (by USA standards, probably below by North American ones) but the land use around most of the newer stations don't have anything within walking distance.

I'm curious what would happen if a transit agency bought some land 3 blocks away from an intended metro or rail station and then ran buses along that street.

So in Denver's case were the station is on Welby Road (I think... the map hard to read), imagine they bought land at the intersection Webley and E 9th Avenue and put the parking lot there and ran buses along Webley Road. The buses continued along Colorado Boulevard north to... somewhere. I was originally going to say the buses just used Webley then realized that was kind of short. They then used the land around the station itself for something else.

OK the N line doesn't really offer much for a one-seat ride for people who walk to it since even if land use was altered around the station the other stations are also surrounded by highways and parking lots so the answer would be nothing would change.

Instead of Denver, imagine some North American city that in real life has a park and ride station on a line heavily used for one-seat rides, but imagine an alternative version where the parking lot was 3 blocks away on the same street and a frequent bus service ran along the street including the parking lot. The bus goes a long way beyond the parking lot and goes as far as a normal bus line that makes frequent stops. The bus stops have a small bench inside a small structure to keep out the rain and screen which shows were the buses are on a map.

4 Way intersections in America generally go through 7 phases. There is a long phase of the major road allowing traffic on both sides to go. There is a short phrase allowing traffic of the minor road to go. There are 4 short phases of allowing each 4 directions to have a protected left turn (or go forward). There is a short pedestrian phase. On this bus route, the phases are altered. So let's say the bus is on a street that goes purely north south. When the north south is the major road or they are of equal size, the "major road" light phase is tripled. When it is the minor road, the "northbound traffic can go north or make protected left" and the "southbound traffic can go south or make protected left" are changed to be 30% longer. This is done for the whole route.

How would this alternate location of the parking lot change things? There are three types of rrders. One, the riders who use the park and ride in real life. Two, those who left home without a car and took the rail line in real life for one-seat rides. Three, those who weren't even using the line in real life but ends up finding whatever was built near the station to be useful. Would the first type of rider still use the parking lot, get on the bus, and then on the train? For the second type of rider, how much does the change in land use improve their quality of life? They obviously weren't getting off at the park and ride in real life and were using the line for the other stops. But now this altered stop has something else built. As for what that something else is, I have no idea, I imagine the land developers can be more creative than "parking lot" since you see a lot less parking in cities without parking minimums.