Communities reap many advantages by clustering development near high-capacity transit. Local businesses prosper, household car ownership decreases, greenhouse gases and costs decrease and low-income residents gain better access to economic opportunity.
Successful TOD requires coordinated planning across departments and agencies. For instance, for it to work effectively, corridor and station area plans must align with the community’s comprehensive plan.
Walkable Communities
Communities well served by transit can benefit from more walkable environments that reduce automobile dependency and encourage active lifestyles, creating walkable neighborhoods that foster neighborhood connectedness while encouraging participation from members of the community and drawing businesses that generate local tax revenue. Walkable communities can be promoted with land use policies that promote density and mixed uses; lower parking minimums in dense areas; offer development incentives which support affordability, inclusivity and walkability; or through neighborhood policies encouraging density or mixed uses to support walkability.
TOD principles can be implemented across an array of environments ranging from urban centers and large mixed-use districts, to single family residential neighborhoods. TOD principles provide strategies that enable dense yet efficient neighborhoods, protecting open space while decreasing environmental footprints.
Residents in TOD neighborhoods typically take 8-32% fewer vehicle trips and own fewer cars, helping reduce traffic congestion and air pollution while reporting greater happiness and quality of life. Furthermore, walking instead of driving to nearby destinations may prevent stress responses that driving often elicits and help bring about an overall improvement in mental health. Furthermore, this leads to healthier communities.
Resilient Communities
Communities need to be resilient in order to quickly respond and recover from disasters or unexpected hardships, with resilience defined as the capacity to sustainably rebound from adversity and adapt to ongoing hardships1.
TOD can be one way of making communities more resilient over the long-term. By creating compact and walkable areas surrounding transit stations, communities can provide affordable housing near public transportation; reduce vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions; foster economic sustainability and social equity – and more!
Community resilience can be defined in different ways; some publications have listed key elements as local knowledge, networks and relationships, health, governance and leadership, economy resources preparedness mental outlook. Transit-oriented development (TOD) strategies can support several of these elements such as community knowledge health networks economic investment preparedness mental outlook. Localities can implement TOD strategies through various tools including small zoning tweaks (allowing mixed use and higher density housing near transit for instance), development incentives to encourage affordable TOD.
Economic Development
TODs can foster economic revitalization and resilience by supporting the creation of high-quality neighborhoods that align with a community’s needs and values. Such communities feature dense development centered on transit stations that prioritizes sustainable land use practices as well as various transportation modes – contributing to higher quality of life while decreasing vehicle miles traveled, greenhouse gas emissions, as well as expanding local business and tax bases.
Establishing these communities requires strong partnerships between government and the private sector to implement planning and design efforts that foster community ownership while supporting TOD strategies. The most successful TOD projects use an integrative approach that capitalizes on each corridor or station area’s individual strengths to make transit-friendly development an integral component of urban strategies, using planning and design guidelines responsive to local community goals.
Environmental Sustainability
Environmental sustainability is about progressively staying within the ecological limits of our planet while enhancing biodiversity and natural resources. It also includes reducing greenhouse gases and addressing climate change, as well as supporting community health and social equity.
By promoting compact and sustainable development, transit-oriented development helps achieve environmental sustainability. It also encourages people to use public transportation, which is more environmentally friendly than driving individual cars. Similarly, by prioritizing pedestrian pathways to transit stations and encouraging mixed-use and multi-family residential housing, TOD can reduce the demand for private vehicles.
TOD-friendly zoning policies also reduce energy consumption and waste, as they promote efficient use of land and buildings. Moreover, the design of TOD is often based on rehabilitating existing structures rather than new construction. This can help to further reduce energy and resource consumption by minimizing the amount of building materials required. Lastly, by implementing community participation processes that engage diverse residents in shaping TOD, communities can foster engagement and ownership of the environment they live in.