Transit-oriented development is the creation of dense, mixed-use, and walkable neighborhoods within easy access to public transportation. These communities can accommodate urban growth while encouraging more transit use and creating vibrant centers of activity. In turn, this approach can lower car congestion, reduce pollution, and make life more affordable by shifting residents out of their cars and onto trains or buses.
The Urban Institute’s new interactive tool explores where and how effectively states and urban areas have invested in transit-oriented development, showing that nationally, there are millions more homes near transit compared with several decades ago. But how does this growth differ across urban areas?
In this article, I leverage data from the tool to answer that question, examining transit availability, adjacency of housing to transit, and housing trends over time.
Better transit service leads to higher transit ridership
Despite the universal need for effective transportation, urban areas throughout the US feature vastly different levels of transit service.
Residents of the New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, DC, regions have more than four times the amount of bus and rail service per capita as residents in Detroit, Indianapolis, and Memphis. Having more transit options per capita makes it much more likely that residents can easily hop on public transportation to get to work, school, or another daily need. Indeed, improved transit service is closely associated with increased transit ridership. It’s no surprise that New York City, San Francisco, and DC residents travel on transit more than seven times as frequently as people living in those other regions.
And a small investment in transit can make a large difference. Among urban areas with at least 1 million residents, an additional mile of service provided per capita (e.g., a bus route running one extra mile on one day in a year) is associated with 2.5 additional annual transit rides per resident.
Homes in large urban areas are often located near transit—but that transit is not always frequent
How often people take transit isn’t just a factor of service availability, it also depends on how metropolitan areas are developed. If people’s homes are located within a reasonable distance of transit, allowing them to walk or bike to a stop from home, they’re more likely to take transit than drive.
New York, San Francisco, and DC have far denser development with easy access to public transportation than Detroit, Indianapolis, or Memphis—another explanation for the higher ridership. Concentrated housing in urban areas also improves the effectiveness of transit service, because transit providers can attract more riders over a shorter route.
We find that most of the nation’s large urban areas provide bus or train service within walking distance of most housing units. Among these regions, Los Angeles and San Francisco perform best, each providing transit service within a half mile of at least 90 percent of homes, while Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston provide service within a half mile to fewer than half of all homes.
Sources: Author’s analysis of American Community Survey Data for 2020–24, Transit Explorer, and National Transit Map.
Notes: Urban area names are simplified. Only includes data for 20 most populous US urban areas. Frequent transit defined as bus or rail service that arrives at least every 15 minutes during the midday, defined as noon to 1 p.m. Rail defined as streetcar, light rail, metro, or commuter rail service.
Additionally, people are more likely to take advantage of transit if it’s frequent, so they don’t have to wait long for the next bus or train. From this perspective, New York and San Francisco perform best, with at least 40 percent of housing units located near services that arrive at least every 15 minutes between noon and 1 p.m., indicative of midday service. (Honolulu, a smaller urban area, also performs well.)
When we control for transit service availability, we find that a 10 percent increase in the share of urban housing units near frequent transit is associated with 10 additional transit rides per person per year. That means a typical urban area with 2 million residents would take an additional 20 million transit trips annually. (The Portland, Oregon, San Antonio, and Sacramento urban areas each have about 2 million residents and recorded 74 million, 31 million, and 18 million transit trips in 2024). These correlations are borne out in research that examines the link between density and ridership.
Some urban areas are doing a better job concentrating housing supply in transit areas
How effective are urban areas in the US at encouraging transit-oriented development? One way to answer this question is to compare changes in housing supply in neighborhoods near rail stations with changes across the whole urban area.
This comparison shows that, among the 26 urban areas with a substantial rail system, most had less than 20 percent of their regional housing growth in areas served by rail between 1980 and 2022, though New York, San Francisco, and San José added at least 30 percent of regional growth near rail during this period. Every urban area has done a better job concentrating growth near rail since 2000 than the previous two decades.
New York City’s enormous subway and commuter railway network makes it an outlier nationally, as it added almost 700,000 housing units near rail between 1980 and 2022. This amount of housing is similar to the entire housing supply of the Charlotte urban area today. Other top performers were DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, and Seattle, each of which added at least 100,000 housing units near rail.
Sources: Author’s analysis of Transit Explorer, 1980 US Census, and American Community Survey Data for 2020–24.
Notes: Urban area names are simplified. Rail defined as streetcar, light rail, metro, or commuter rail service; uses 2026 data on rail station locations (as such, the 1980 data are not adjusted for rail stations in place at the time; geographies remain the same over time). Only includes data for urban areas with at least 30,000 units within a half mile of rail stations in 1980.
Effective transit-oriented development requires quality transit and policy incentives
Most large urban areas throughout the US have increased their housing supply near transit over the past four decades, allowing more residents to live in neighborhoods where people don’t need a car to get around. To encourage further housing supply through transit-oriented development, policymakers should consider the following:
- Ensure transit service is frequent and reliable. Frequent buses and trains attract more riders and make it more feasible for people to live in newly constructed transit-oriented developments. Transit agencies should ensure residents of densely developed areas can step on board a nearby bus or train without waiting more than a few minutes.
- Encourage rezonings to support higher densities near stations. To accommodate growth in neighborhoods near transit, cities and states need to enable high-density housing and commercial space through upzoning and eliminate parking requirements.
- Invest in quality of life near transit. Government support can help ensure transit-oriented development produces affordable homes through investments like social housing programs, which can concentrate resources near stations. Cities can also focus their investments on public services and the public realm—such as sidewalks—to make neighborhoods more livable and enticing for residents.
- Support joint planning between transportation and housing. Decisions on transit and housing investments are typically made by different institutions working at different geographical scales. Communities can encourage transit-oriented development by coordinating investments across both domains.
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