Do TODs Make a Difference?

Authors

Arthur C. Nelson, University of Utah
Matt Miller, University of Utah
Dejan Eskic, University of Utah
Keuntae Kim, University of Utah
Reid Ewing, University of Utah
Jenny H. Liu, Portland State UniversityFollow
Matt Berggren, Portland State University
Zakari Mumuni, Portland State University

Sponsor

This research was funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, or NITC, a program of TREC at Portland State University. Funding was also provided by Utah Transit Authority, Salt Lake County, Wasatch Front Regional Council, Mountainlands Association of Governments, University of Utah, Portland State University, and University of Arizona.

Document Type

Report

Publication Date

12-2015

Subjects

Transit-oriented development, Transportation -- Planning, Bus rapid transit, Street-railroads

Abstract

In this report, we present research that measures the outcomes of TOD areas in relation to their metropolitan area controls with respect to (1) jobs by sector; (2) housing choice for household types based on key demographic characteristics; (3) housing affordability based on transportation costs; and (4) job-worker balance as a measure of accessibility. Prior literature has not systematically evaluated TOD outcomes in these respects with respect to light rail transit (LRT), commuter rail transit (CRT), bus rapid transit (BRT), and streetcar transit (SCT) systems. Our analysis helps close some of these gaps. We apply our analysis to 23 fixed-guideway transit systems operating in 17 metropolitan areas in the South and West that have one or more of those systems. We find: (1) Most TOD areas gained jobs in the office, knowledge, education, health care and entertainment sectors, adding more than $100 billion in wages capitalized over time; (2) In assessing economic resilience associated with LRT systems, jobs continued to shift away from TOD areas before the Great Recession, the pace slowed during the recession but reversed during recovery, leading us to speculate that LRT TOD areas may have transformed metropolitan economies served by LRT systems; (3) Rents for offices, retail stores and apartments were higher when closer to SCT systems, had mixed results with respect LRT systems, but were mostly lower with respect to CRT systems (our BRT sample was too small to evaluate); (4) SCT systems performed best in terms of increasing their TOD-area shares of metropolitan population, households and householders by age, housing units, and renters with BRT systems performing less well while LRT and CRT systems experienced a much smaller shift in the share of growth; (5) Household transportation costs as a share of budgets increase with respect to distance from LRT transit stations to seven miles, suggesting the proximity to LRT stations reduces total household transportation costs; (6) Emerging trends that may favor higher-wage jobs locating in TOD areas over time than lower- or middle-wage jobs, perhaps because TOD areas attract more investment which requires more productive, higher-paid labor to justify the investment; and (7) The share of workers who commute 10 minutes or less to work increases nearly one-half of 1 percent for each half-mile their resident block group is to an LRT transit station, capping at a gain of 1.3 percent, which is not a trivial gain. Our report summarizes case studies of 23 transit systems and three journal articles based on our research.

Description

This is a final report, NITC-RR-547/763, from the NITC program of TREC at Portland State University, and can be found online at: http://nitc.trec.pdx.edu/research/project/547

Do TODs Make a Difference Case Studies are available below in the Additional Files below

DOI

10.15760/trec.7

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/16717

Recommended Citation

Nelson, A. C., Miller, M., Eskic, D., Kim, K., Ewing, R., Liu, J. H., ... & Mumuni, Z. (2015). Do TODs Make a Difference? NITC-RR-547/763. Portland, OR: Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC), 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.15760/trec.7