Resource CenterResource Center Home

Executive Summary As the Puget Sound region invests billions in a new light rail system, many stake­holders, including community leaders, workers, equity advocates and planners, are asking – who will benefit? Will the advantages of living along light rail be shared by households of all incomes and people of all races and ethnicities? Transit oriented development (TOD), holds tremendous promise and opportunity for communities of color and low-income households. But, strong evidence of gentrification and the threat of displacement in Seattle’s Rainier Valley, accelerated by the light rail, threaten to undermine this promise. Rainier Valley represents one of the most racially diverse areas in the Puget Sound and is also one of the first communities to receive light rail. Ensuring that TOD results in real equity outcomes requires a sharp focus on what equity means and a steady determination to achieve those outcomes. By includ­ing a racial justice framework in TOD planning and…

Foreward TCRP Report 153: Guidelines for Providing Access to Public Transportation Stations provides a process and spreadsheet-based tool for effectively planning for access to high capacity transit stations, including commuter rail, heavy rail, light rail, bus rapid transit (BRT), and ferry. The report is accompanied by a CD that includes the station access planning spreadsheet tool that allows trade-off analyses among the various access modes (automobile, transit, bicycle, pedes­trian, and transit-oriented development) for different station types. The potential effectiveness of transit-oriented development opportunities to increase transit ridership is also assessed. This report and accompanying materials are intended to aid the many groups involved in planning, developing, and improving access to high capacity transit stations, including public transportation and highway agencies, planners, developers, and…

Executive Summary INTRODUCTION There is a growing body of evidence, including earlier Mineta Transportation Institute-sponsored research, showing that multi-destination transit systems are far more effective in attracting passengers and more efficient in use of resources to carry each passenger than central business district (CBD)-focused systems. At the same time, however, evidence is beginning to show that multi-destination transit systems appeal largely to transit-dependent riders (also called captive riders), whose demand for transit service appears to be highly elastic with respect to the shortening of transit travel time between origin and destination. Given the interest in using transit investments to lure people from their automobiles in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce congestion, it is imperative that the appeal of such systems to choice riders (also called discretionary riders) also be understood. However, this issue remains as yet relatively unexplored.

Background Over the next 25 years, the San Francisco Bay Area is projected to grow by an estimated 22 percent—adding around 1.6 million new residents. Land use and development professionals are engaged in a dialogue around how the region can accommodate this growth in a way that maintains the extraordinary quality-of-life that attracts people to live and work in the region. With an eye toward demographic shifts like an aging population and an increasing number of smaller and non-family households, planners and developers recognize the growing demand for homes and jobs in walkable, urban environments. High land and housing costs in the core areas of the region, however, create continued development pressure in the outskirts of the region, leading to commute-times and household transportation costs that are among the highest in the nation. The high cost of housing and transportation is particularly felt by the region’s moderate- and lower-income families, who in some cities spend as…

Executive Summary Local and state governments use various tools to encourage development in economically challenged areas. Tax-increment financing (TIF) has been a leading tool used for this purpose. TIF allows cities and towns to borrow against an area’s future tax revenues in order to invest in immediate projects or encourage present development. When used properly and sparingly, TIF can promote enduring growth and stronger communities. When used improperly, however, TIF can waste taxpayer resources or channel money to politically favored special interests. To protect the public interst, governments should impose strong safeguards that ensure that TIF projectsare implemented through a transparent, accountable process with clear and compelling goals. Governments must use care in choosing when to use tax-increment financing. The public can benefit from subsidies that bring lasting economic development to declining or stagnant areas. However, tax-increment financing can be wasted on…

Reconnecting America today released four training modules created for and funded by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) that illustrate various principles of creating and maintaining sustainable communities. The modules created by Reconnecting America’s LINK (Leadership¸ Innovation, Networks, Knowledge) Team were presented at three APTA conferences with the goal of educating practitioners, public transit agencies, elected officials and other decision-makers. 

Building and expanding a fixed rail public transit system is a considerable undertaking for any metropolitan region. Investments on this scale, which can run in the billions of dollars, certainly reshape how people move throughout a region, but their impacts do not end at the turnstile. For residents and businesses that place importance on accessibility, such investments can also essentially redistribute the value of location within a region, making a place more or less desirable than before simply because of its proximity to the transit system. And as we know, a residential location’s value is best reflected in how much people are willing to pay to live there.

Introduction The purpose of this digest is provide an update to The Zoning and Real Estate Implications of Transit-Oriented Development (TCRP LRD 12). When TCRP LRD 12 was published in early 1999, only a handful of transit-oriented development (TOD) and transit-based joint development statutory and regulatory programs existed in the United States; those that did exist were, at that juncture, new and relatively untested. Since then, the field has filled with a number of new TOD and joint development programs, policies, and built projects, along with a robust academic and professional litera­ture. Cumulatively, these sources demonstrate a wide range of legal devices geared, directly and indirectly, toward promoting and building TOD and joint develop­ment projects. This digest attempts to trace these developments, beginning with an overview of the significant literature since the late 1990s. The literature summary is followed by a comprehensive…