The 2023 Transportation Demand Management Program Report

TDM Program Overview

The City of Cambridge requires properties to participate in the TDM Program in two ways: through the PTDM Ordinance and through conditions on Planning Board Special Permits. The City requires about 100 properties to submit a report about their sustainable transportation programs and the transportation patterns of people visiting their sites every year. If a property is required to do monitoring and reporting, they begin reporting approximately one year after the new or renovated facility is occupied.

Parking and Transportation Demand Management Ordinance

The PTDM Ordinance, adopted in 1998, aims to reduce traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions, and improve traffic safety. It does this by promoting walking, bicycling, public transit, and other sustainable modes. A property triggers the Ordinance if it meets all of these criteria: 1. It is non-residential, 2. It creates any new parking or changes who can use existing parking, and 3. The total number of parking spaces at the site is 5-19 (Small Projects) or 20 or more (Large Projects).

The Ordinance requires these projects to create a PTDM plan, which must be approved by the City. Large Project PTDM plans must include a commitment to reduce the percentage of people driving alone to the project and implement a range of transportation demand management measures. Large Projects must also monitor travel to the site and report on the status of the SOV commitment and TDM measures. Small Projects must implement at least three TDM measures, but there is no SOV commitment or annual monitoring.

A wide variety of measures have been implemented to meet PTDM SOV commitments. All PTDM plans include measures to promote walk, bike, transit, and carpool travel. However, the Ordinance allows property owners and employers to choose measures that are most appropriate for their site.

High-impact TDM measures include:

Offering MBTA pass subsidies, Providing Bluebikes stations and offering annual memberships, Offering incentives for walking and biking, Charging people directly for parking, and Providing shuttle service to transit stations. PTDM plans can also include supportive TDM measures that establish a culture of using sustainable transportation. Supportive measures include providing showers and changing facilities for people who walk or bike to work, reserved parking for carpools, and occasional parking for people who don’t usually drive.

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Planning Board Special Permits

The City also makes TDM agreements with property owners through the Planning Board Special Permit process. When the City expects that a project will have large transportation impacts, the Planning Board may include a TDM plan as a condition of the Special Permit. Some Special Permit TDM properties have SOV commitments like Large PTDM Projects, and some do not.

Important Terms and Survey Information

Transportation mode is how a person gets around. The modes discussed in this report are: Drive alone / Single-occupancy vehicle (SOV): Using a private vehicle alone, including motorcycles, taxis, and ride-hail services like Uber and Lyft. Ride-hail was added to the TDM Program survey in 2017. Carpool: Using a private vehicle with one or more other people, including vanpools and shared ride-hail services like UberX Share or Lyft Shared. Shared ride-hail was added to the TDM Program survey in 2017.

Public Transit: Using a bus, subway, train, trolly, ferry, or public or private shuttle. Walk: Walking or using a wheelchair. Bike: Riding a bike, including personal bikes and Bluebikes public bikeshare. Other: Using another method. “Other” is an option in Census Bureau surveys and appeared in TDM Program surveys before 2020. Micromobility: Using a scooter, skateboard, skates, or other micromobility device. These devices are sometimes but not always electric.

Micromobility devices are not listed as options in Census Bureau surveys. In TDM Program surveys, micromobility devices were included under “Other” before 2020, when they became their own survey category. A sustainable mode or sustainable transportation option is any mode other than driving alone. All surveys used in this report ask what mode a person used for the longest part of their trip to work, school, shopping, or other activities. Of course, most trips include multiple modes.

For example, someone who walked to their parked car, drove, parked, and then walked again to their destination would choose “drive alone” on a survey. SOV commitments are commitments made by property owners to keep the percentage of people driving alone to the project below a certain level. SOV commitments are linked to a particular type of site user, like employees, students, residents, or patrons.

Some properties have a single SOV commitment, and some have multiple commitments, depending on who is expected to visit the site. If a property has multiple commitments, they conduct one survey for each commitment type. To interpret information about mode frequency in this report, it is important to know the TDM Program survey questions people are responding to: Employees and commuting graduate students answer how they got to or participated in work or school each day of the survey week.

Page 5 of 16 Residents answer how they got to or participated in work or school each day of the survey week and also how they usually participate in shopping, social activities, and medical appointments. Patrons, visitors, patients, and guests answer how they got to the location that day. The TDM Program includes properties whose participation is required by the PTDM Ordinance or Planning Board Special Permit conditions. Some sections of this report compare employees at TDM Program properties to the Cambridge workforce, which is all people who work in Cambridge, no matter where they live. Commute information for the Cambridge workforce comes from the U.S. Census Bureau. Other reports from Cambridge’s Community Development Department sometimes include information about the Cambridge labor force, which is all Cambridge residents who work, no matter where they work. This report does not include information about the Cambridge labor force.

Page 6 of 16 2023 Monitoring Results The 2023 transportation monitoring results represent the TDM Program’s first full year of monitoring since 2019. In 2022, the City resumed transportation monitoring after a pause during the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic. In usual years, we have two monitoring cycles – spring and fall. In 2022, we conducted monitoring in fall only, which included roughly half of the properties in our program. The 2022 partial-year report is available on the TDM Program website, but the results will not be included in this or future reports because they do not represent a full year of monitoring data.

Reports Received and Commitments Met