Orange Code

Orange County, FL is currently in the process of reformulating it's zoning code. It is following in the footsteps of cities like Miami and Buffalo which have replaced their conventional use-based Euclidean zoning codes with a Form-Based Code (FBC) called the Orange Code.

 

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FBCs have many advantages over Euclidian zoning, because they regulate the physical characteristics of the structures on a site instead of what happens on the site. For this reason, FBCs are often found to be more understandable to the public, allowing a more constructive public outreach.

Although not particularly common in the literature, I believe that one of the strongest arguments against Euclidean zoning codes is that they control a variable about which few members of the public have strong opinions. Indeed, with only a few exceptions, land use is one of the things about a neighboring property in which I am at a loss to think of any reason why the community should have a say at all. If a building looks like a house and generates the number of vehicular trips, loud noises, and vibrations as a single-family residence, why would a neighbor care if the building is in fact used as a single-family residence instead of an accounting office or an art gallery?

Actual impacts to networked infrastructure and the generation of nuisance are related to land use, but certainly not the same thing. And impacts to infrastructure and nuisance can be controlled in an objective manner with much greater specificity by addressing these issues directly, rather than using land use as a proxy.

At the end of the day, the things that neighboring landowners and residents care about are nuisance potential and aesthetics. By focusing on land use, Euclidean zoning only indirectly controls these aspects of a development.

Within urban and suburban districts, an FBC ignores land use and instead focuses on density, height, bulk, and placement of structures. Many FBCs also have extensive ornamentation and other purely aesthetic requirements.

On one hand, this is a useful tool, because it regulates the aspects of development that are understandable to members of the public, and can create realistic expectations about how an area will grow and change over time. On the other hand, it is odd to think that the government should have the authority to regulate aesthetics at all.

However, most conventional building codes also include extensive regulations regarding purely aesthetic considerations of a project. So although I have trouble understanding why this is considered an acceptable use of the police powers of the state, it is certainly not an invention of FBCs.

If adopted, I believe that Orange Code will be the largest implementation of an FBC yet in the United States. It would apply anywhere in Orange County that is not within the limits of an incorporated city. The 2021 population of Orange County is approximately 1,417,280 people, while only 498,505 live in incorporated cities including Orlando, and 11 others. That means the population of the area falling under the jurisdiction of Orange Code will be approximately 918,775. From my brief inspection of the codes listed on the website of the Form-Based Code Institute, the largest jurisdiction with a FBC is currently the City of Miami, which has a population of 478,251--around half that of unincorporated Orange County.

Unlike Miami, unincorporated Orange County has much less diversity of land uses, with the vast majority falling under conservation, agricultural uses, and conventional post-war suburban development. More recent development within Orange County has included a number of large-scale master-planned developments with New Urbanist and Traditional Neighborhood Design characteristics, but still fairly low densities.

The only two major areas of the unincorporated Orange County with any sort of density (where a FBC really gets to flex its muscle) are (1) the portions of the International Drive tourism corridor generally south of Sand Lake Road, including the Orange County Convention Center, Universal's Epic Universe Theme Park, and Sea World; and (2) the areas surrounding the main campus of the University of Central Florida (UCF).

It is not clear to me how much the Orange Code will change what can and will be built in the International Drive area (1). The land here is so valuable for tourism-related uses and this area is already home to some of the largest buildings in Central Florida. However, the UCF area (2) is already mostly built-out, but was built at a much lower density than the market currently is demanding. I can see Orange Code as providing opportunity to accommodate the redevelopment of this region in a manner that would be more difficult under the existing zoning.

One of my concerns regarding the Orange Code (and FBCs in general) is the question of administration. Will it be possible for the administrators of the code to determine objectively and impartially whether a proposed project is in compliance? In other words, will the code be easy for a developer to satisfy, even if the project is locally unpopular? Unpopular development and redevelopment is crucial for keeping cost of living low and providing housing for all levels of the economic distribution.

I believe my earlier remarks make it clear that I am opposed to conventional, Euclidean zoning because the land use designations are so often completely unrelated to the nuisances or negative impacts of a given development. However, one major advantage of Euclidean zoning is that it is often fairly easy to determine what land use a given project is. So it is rare that unpopular projects can be stopped over ambiguity over whether it is a permitted use or not.

It is not clear to me how a project could be permitted as-of-right under an FBC, because so much of the requirements are a matter of aesthetics. Obviously, measures like bulk, height, and placement can be objectively determined. But if a code has less-than-objective requirements, that leaves room for the administrators of the code to have leeway to reject the applications of locally unpopular projects that are beneficial to the region (such as multi-unit residential).

Housing affordability is directly tied to the land use regulation in a region. The tourist economy in Central Florida is dependent on maintaining low costs of living. Cities with high costs of living have land use regulation regimes that empower existing land owners to apply political pressure to oppose new developments, raising costs of housing (and other necessary real estate), and strongly benefiting existing residents at the expense of future residents.

Instead of providing existing residents the tools to veto new development near them, I would like our land use regulation to be focused on allowing the greatest variety of uses and density while minimizing the negative impacts to existing residents and property owners.

I emailed my concerns about the potential for Orange Code to increase housing costs to the Chief Planner within the Orange County Planning department who was listed as a contact for this initiative.

He responded that the Orange Code is designed to offer developers much more flexibility in selecting parcel uses and will simplify the approval process. He also expects that the code will help make the unpopular uses be designed in such a way that they become more supportive of the neighborhood character and therefore seen as less objectionable or even desirable by the public. I believe that this is an optimistic take, but it definitely has the potential to be true. At least in some cases.

Will the Orange Code be objective enough that the developer of an unpopular project will be able to get it approved by following predetermined rules? Or will it be used as a tool to extract concessions from developers in order to drive up housing costs and prevent anything but luxury developments from being built? I am cautiously optimistic, but will be following the development of the code closely.

If you want to learn more about the Orange Code and let the county know what you think about these issues, there will be two additional online public workshops that you can sign up for on July 7 and July 8, 2021.

Brightline and Frequent Service between MCO and Disney Springs

Brightline was in the news recently for signing a deal with Miami-Dade County to provide them with the rights to operate a commuter service on the Brightline right-of-way into Miami Centrail Station (source). Would a similar service be provided on the new rail right-of-way between Disney and the Orlando International Airport (MCO)? Or is this a one-off because Miami is such a lucrative market?

Source: Brightline Presentation to CFX on March 11, 2021

The benefits of running a train every 15 minutes between MCO and Disney may have a decent case based on potential revenue. Such a service definitely won't collect all the trips that Disney's Magical Express (DME) used to provide, and it certainly wouldn't collect all the trips from Uber or rental cars. But the market for four trains an hour is more than four times the size of the market for one train an hour, simply because the average wait would be so much shorter. 

The costs of running trains every 15 minutes are greater than the costs of running a train every hour, as is the current plan for Brightline. But crucially, the extra costs have a smaller cost per train. These costs above the cost of running hourly service include:

1. Signals to allow closer train operation
2. Trainsets to serve the extra runs
3. Fuel to run the trains
4. Staff to operate the trains
5. Maintenance costs of the trains
   

Item 1, signaling, is fairly inexpensive. It is even less so especially in a low complexity environment with few stations, junctions, and low intersecting train traffic such as either proposed route. The Brightline presentation to CFX on March 11 indicated that this costs approximately $80,000 with the current design (page 24).

It is not clear what the maximum frequency of service can be supported by this signaling system. But we also know that Brightline is already planning on this capability because they are actively courting SunRail to run a service that would need to utilize these additional signals. Even still, assume that a signaling system necessary to operate trains every 15 minutes is three times as expensive as what they are currently planning to build, that is still only be an extra $160,000.

Item 2, additional trainsets, is difficult to calculate, because Brightline did not release the cost of their train orders from Siemens. However, based on the information I could find online, one might expect a single trainset to cost approximately $10 million. It would take approximately 15 minutes to travel between MCO and Disney Springs, so it would require three trainsets (in addition to the trainsets that provide the baseline hourly service Brightline is currently intending to operate) in order to provide 15 minute headways on this segment. This would mean it would cost approximately $30 million extra to provide this service.

Item 3, fuel costs, can be calculated assuming a fuel efficiency of 1.1mpg (source). Brightline's preferred alternative route is 16.7 miles (source page 24). So six additional one-way train runs is 100.2 miles every hour or 110.2 gallons of diesel per hour. If diesel is $3.75/gallon, that is $6,613.20 per 16 hour day, or $2.4 million per year in additional fuel costs.

Item 4, staff, can be calculated assuming a two person train staff. The 90th percentile salary of a train conductor in Florida is $66,270 (source), while the same for a train engineer is $98,960 (source). If the fully burdened cost of this staff is three times the salary, and there are three shifts of each staff person per train (in order to allow breaks and the like), the total annual labor cost of this service would be $1.5 million.

Item 5, maintenance costs, can be estimated at $4.34 per train mile (source). This works out to be about $2.5 million per year.

In other words, for an initial capital investment of $30.2 million and an additional labor cost of approximately $6.4 million per year, there could be a reliable, congestion-free way to get between the airport and Walt Disney World.

DME used to carry 2.3 million passengers per year (source). So if this train service with 15 minute headways could carry one quarter of the trips that DME used to carry, that would be 575,000 trips per year. Ignoring the capital costs, the break even cost at this ridership level would require a one-way ticket price of $11.13.

Is this a complete no-brainer to build at this break-even point? Not really. But it is well within the realm of having a plausible business case to build. That's for sure.

Will Disney Want to Replace Disney's Magical Express Buses with Brightline Trains?

Recently, the intercity passenger railroad company Brightline announced that they made a deal with Disney to have a train station at Disney Springs as a part of their planned Orlando to Tampa route. 

Image source: Brightline presentation at ART Educational Series - Strengthening Central Florida's Global Gateways on 12/3/2020. See a recording of the presentation here.

Since this announcement, there has been speculation that this would allow Disney to discontinue the bus-based Disney Magical Express (DME) airport transportation service and replace it with a Brightline train service. In many forums, any discussion of this possibility has received push back from people who are concerned about perceived difficulties to riders in navigating such a system, along with questioning the costs to Disney of using such a system.

The concerns about Brightline being less convenient than DME for most domestic arrivals seems overblown to me.

As far as the quality of the passenger experience is concerned, depending on train frequency, there is no particular reason to expect a two seat train + bus ride to take longer than the current one seat bus ride, because the bus portion of the trip would use the existing Disney Springs to hotel buses (potentially at a higher frequency justified by of higher demand). Even without higher frequency bus service, the travel times for a two seat train + bus ride are likely to be shorter than the existing DME service because there would be fewer intermediate stops, higher speeds, and less impact from highway congestion.

What would be the advantage to Disney of a train + bus airport connection? In addition to a higher quality guest experience provided by smoother ride, fewer delays, and more legroom, such a system has the potential to be provided at a lower cost than a bus connection.

How could something this infrastructure-heavy possibly be more cost effective than buses?

Brightline is planning to build this train line to connect Orlando and Tampa via Disney Springs. Their internal studies apparently indicate that there is enough intercity passenger demand to justify creating such a service. In addition, it is my understanding that the new Brightline track is owned by FEC, the Florida East Coast Railroad. FEC is a freight railroad that runs along the east coast of Florida between Jacksonville and Miami.

If Brightline allowed FEC to run freight trains along the right of way between the Florida east coast and Tampa, it would allow them to compete with CSX, the other major freight rail operator in Florida for access to Orlando and Tampa. This freight service alone could go a long way to pay for the infrastructure costs of adding and maintaining this new rail line.

Additionally, the non-Disney Orlando to Tampa passenger travel demand would go a long way to justifying the costs of building this infrastructure.

Therefore, it is extremely likely that in order for Brightline to justify a passenger train service to Disney, they only need to justify the costs of paying for the marginal cost of the train sets and the labor to run the trains between the two stops. These costs could be bundled into a price to charge Disney for offering the service for free to Disney resort guests.

For Disney to save money by switching from Bus to Train transportation between the airport and the resort, I believe that the cost of a train per passenger is likely to be similar to the cost of a bus per passenger. So the main differentiator would be whether Brightline could move more people with fewer employees than Mears, the current operator of the DME buses.

To illustrate how this saves labor, let's imaging a simplified model of the current Bus Only system:

In order to provide a reasonable level of service, each of the Disney Springs to Resort buses (orange in the diagram) operates at a 20 minute headway, requiring 2 buses and 2 bus drivers who can transport up to 50 guests one way in 20 minutes. This creates a maximum capacity of 150 passengers per direction per hour.

Each of the two Airport Bus to Resort routes would operate at a 20 minute headway as well. Each bus requires 1 driver who can transport up to 50 guests one way in 60 minutes. In order to provide a reasonable level of service, the buses operate at a 20 minute headway, meaning that 6 buses and 6 bus drivers are required with a maximum capacity of 150 passengers per direction per hour

In this scenario, there are 24 buses and 24 bus drivers serving all resorts A, B, C, D, E, and F. The passenger travel time from any resort to Disney Springs averages to 30 minutes (including a 10 minute average wait). The passenger travel time to the airport averages 70 minutes (including the 10 minute average wait).

A simplified version of the Train + Bus system would have the following characteristics:

The buses between Disney Springs and all of the resorts have the same characteristics as in the Bus Only system.

The Airport Train to Disney Springs would require 1 driver who can transport up to 240 guests one way in 20 minutes. (Note that additional passenger carriages can be added to the train sets to increase capacity without increasing drivers.) In order to provide a reasonable level of service, the trains operate at a 20 minute headway, meaning that 6 trains and 6 drivers are required with a maximum capacity of 720 passengers per direction per hour.

In this scenario, there are 12 buses 6 trains and 18 bus or train drivers serving resorts A, B, C, D, E, and F. The passenger travel time from any resort to Disney Springs averages to 30 minutes (including a 10 minute average wait). The passenger travel time to the airport from any resort averages 60 minutes (including the 10 minute average wait for the train and a 10 minute average wait for the bus).

Note that bus and train schedules could be coordinated to reduce the transfer time to less than 10 minutes if needed, or that additional buses may be run between Disney Springs and each resort if ridership demand is high enough. This would lower wait times for the bus and average travel times as well. So the time savings could be increased by another 5 minutes quite easily.

I would not expect the Brightline express service between the airport and Disney Springs to use advance reservations or advance seat assignments. Instead, I think it is most likely that passengers would select a seat upon arrival at the train station or that the train would not offer assigned seating. In my experience riding trains in Asia, seat selection for a frequent service train line is not generally made in advance.

Guests who chose to bring their baggage on the existing Brightline trains have a baggage parking area in each train car, keeping it comfortably out of the way.

In summary, a two seat ride would reduce labor by 25% and reduce travel time to the airport by 15%. The train portion of the ride would also have less potential for traffic delays and would be a more comfortable ride than the bus.

Factor in the other benefits including increased visitation to Disney Springs and a higher quality experience between the airport and WDW makes Disney's side of the agreement look pretty easy to justify if the price is right.