Transit-oriented development (TOD) is a built environment that is dense, diverse, walkable, and served by effective public transportation options. It holds promise for creating vibrant, accessible, and equitable communities. Existing efforts to track TOD remain underdeveloped, but measuring how communities compare in implementation can establish trends and identify potential areas of concern. Tracking should be a vital element of a broader effort to promote TOD, which includes developing appropriate planning standards and ensuring development feasibility.
Why Tracking Matters for Effective Transit-Oriented Development
Key performance indicators can help policymakers assess how TOD is working in multiple places, and over time. Using these indicators, stakeholders can develop new policies and target resources to create neighborhoods near transit that are good places to live, work, and visit for a broad set of people, while cumulatively building a city- and metropolitan-wide network of linked transit-served nodes of activity.
Tracking Transit-Oriented Development Can Help Achieve Policy Goals
In this brief, we recommend a set of indicators—and associated available data—that can help stakeholders understand whether TOD is accomplishing several major goals, including:
- adherence to state or regional planning standards
- expansion of housing availability, especially of affordable housing, and economic value through the development of mixed-use neighborhoods
- prevention of unwanted demographic change
- provision of high-quality transportation options and increased use of noncar mobility
- increased access to employment and public resources
To prevent a coordination problem, states should assign and fund a specific entity—such as a regional governance body like a metropolitan planning organization or a state-level agency like the department of commerce or transportation—to regularly assess and report on indicator performance and change over time. Policymakers must ensure that these agencies are well-staffed and adequately funded to undertake this endeavor.
Ultimately, tracking indicators can help identify the extent to which TOD areas are living up to their potential and assist policymakers in targeting resources to communities that need assistance. Leveraging indicators can help communities create vibrant, livable, and affordable places where people want to be, while ensuring that people can reliably use transit to get to and from their homes, offices, schools, recreation, and other key destinations.
How We Conducted This Research
We conducted a national review of existing efforts by cities, metropolitan areas, and transportation agencies to assess progress in creating vibrant, livable, and affordable communities near transit. Then, based on the results of a dialogue with stakeholders engaged in this topic around the country, we developed a set of indicators to aid policymakers in achieving related goals.
