Key Transportation Planning Principles--
Transit-Oriented Designs

Transit-Oriented Designs (TODs) are mixed-use, walkable communities developed around transit stops. These designs significantly reduce auto dependency. They also have proven to be an economic boon, revitalizing downtowns and main streets and offering a new model for managing growth. 

On-Line Articles: 

Voters Pass METRO Referendum
A press release announcing that voters in Houston narrowly approved in November 2003 a regional transit plan that will eventually bring 72 miles of new rail service to the city, while expanding bus service by 50 percent. The full plan will be completed in 2025 at a cost of $7.5 billion. However, voters only authorized the next phase of this plan, which will use $640 million in bonds to pay for 22 miles of light rail in central Houston. The Metropolitan Transit Authority, or METRO, plans to place the next phase of the plan before voters in 2009.

Development on the Line
From the February 2002 issue of American City and County, this article discusses the benefits of TODs, and highlights communities where such developments are successful.

What is Transit-Oriented Design?, Laura Olsen, appearing in Access: Communities and Transit-Oriented Design. National Transportation Library, U.S. Dept. of Transportation.
This article describes the first set of case studies released by Mobility Partners and provides a look at community-based, transit-oriented design initiatives. The site also includes a variety of other transportation-related documents.

Making Tough Streets a Little Friendlier
This article from the Michigan Land Use Institute profiles "a church-based community development corporation on Chicago’s west side that is using a recently modernized rail transit line as the backbone of an ambitious retail and single family home development plan that it hopes will transform some of this city's toughest streets."

Links: 

Center for Transit-Oriented Development
The Center for Transit-Oriented Development seeks to use transit investments to spur a new wave of development that improves housing affordability and choice, revitalizes downtowns and urban and suburban neighborhoods, and provides value capture and recapture for individuals, communities and transportation agencies.

Transit Station Communities
This website addresses transit-oriented development in the Puget Sound region, providing background information, identifying development opportunities, and providing resource links.

Florida Center for Community Design & Research
This site profiles sustainable community design principles, and includes discussions on transportation and the design of cities, and mobility and the American lifestyle.  

Transit-Oriented Design Project
The goal of the TOD Project is to meet the market demand for walkable transit oriented communities around rail stations and transit stops in a way that delivers on the equity and environmental promises of this kind of development.

Modern Transit Society, Inc.
The Modern Transit Society was founded twenty years ago in Northern California, with its largest chapters in San Francisco and Sacramento. There is an abundance of material on this website encouraging transit oriented, pedestrian friendly development.

Publications: 

Local Index of Transit Availability
The Local Index of Transit Availability (LITA), a free downloadable PDF from the Local Government Commission, is a system for rating transit service intensity, or transit availability, in various parts of a metropolitan area. LITA scores are intended to be useful to transit service planners as well as local land use planners and policymakers, allowing them to see where transit service is most intense and aiding them in developing appropriate land use plans and policies for areas with high, medium and low transit availability.

Building Livable Communities: A Policymaker’s Guide to Transit-Oriented Development
Published and for sale by The Center for Livable Communities, Local Government Commission, Sacramento, California. This excellent print publication focuses on the design elements, financial tools and reasons for using TODs. It lists a great many helpful resources.

Construction of Transit-Based Development
A September 2001 report by the Mineta Transportation Institute that reviews policies and legislative programs that can be adopted at all levels of government to encourage transit-based development. In PDF format, 148 pages.

Marketing Transit Oriented Design
This report was prepared for the Florida Department of Transportation in 1998. It addresses traditional real estate development and Florida's growth management. The 64-page report is online as a PDF.

Transit Oriented Development: Moving from Rhetoric to Reality This 2002 paper from the Brookings Institute takes a hard look at such developments, and finds them to be, by and large, lacking. The authors note that rather than being transit-oriented many of these new developments are more or less traditional suburban developments that are transit-adjacent. The paper introduces a new, comprehensive definition of transit-oriented development (TOD) that takes the concept of TOD beyond its physical form. This paper proposes new reforms and strategies to help TOD projects overcome barriers and reach their full promise.

Videos: 

The Transit Stop Opportunity is a 22-minute video that explores ways the local transit stop can become a focal point for community life. It is available through the Center for Livable Communities, Local Government Commission, Sacramento, California.  

Success Stories:

Seattle Central Link light-rail Line
Seattle broke ground in November 2003 on its new light-rail line, a 14-mile line running from the center of the city to near the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Sound Transit, which serves the three-county region around Puget Sound, expects the rail project to carry 42,500 riders each day by 2020. Sound Transit's first light rail project, a 1.6-mile line in downtown Tacoma, started operating in late August 2003, and was exceeding all expectations for ridership by early September.

Last updated: January 30, 2004

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