Working on a project where the property line is adjacent to a railroad track operated by a private railway company(BNSF). Our building hugs the property line and I am wondering the the rail line would qualify as a transit corridor?
"When the property line abuts a public street, alley, or transit corridor, the lighting boundary may be moved to the center line of that street, alley, or corridor."
I feel like it meets the intent of the credit, but am curious if anyone has run into this.
Bill Swanson
Sr. Electrical EngineerIntegrated Design Solutions
LEEDuser Expert
731 thumbs up
July 28, 2017 - 11:38 am
This is hard to answer. I also think it meets the intent but I don't know how to defend this position.
I just answered a similar question on another page. I said the publicly accessible walkway was not a public street because it was not owned by a government entity. This train line's land is also not government owned. But I know very few train lines that are.
I think of most train lines as transit corridors. But is it a "public transit corridor"? There's no definition called out by USGBC. There's a lot of talk in LEED-ND about access to transit corridors. But no mention of them being "public".
Googling I find this,
"A public transit corridor in an urban environment may be viewed as a linear or curvilinear concentration of land use activity in which significant travel takes place via public transit. There is a symbiotic relationship between the land use concentration along a corridor and the transit infrastructure and services provided. This relationship evolves over a long period of time. Concentrations of appropriate land use and an urban form which encourages pedestrian activity will provide the necessary base for the provision of public transit."
Is this train line, or transit corridor even accessible to the occupants of this building? Or is this just a freight line that passes thru the area?
This is a gray area. If you submit this credit assuming the train line is a public transit corridor I don't know how the reviewer will respond. I don't want to add more documentation requirements for teams.
Public transit occurs thru the corridor. I want to consider it as a public transit corridor but this contradicts my previous statement about ownership of the land. I don't' have a logical argument to defend this position if challenged by a LEED Reviewer. Maybe I'm overthinking this.