Do TODs Make a Difference?

The United States is moving into a new era of metropolitan development and form. The demographic, economic and finance drivers that made America a suburban nation may have run their course. America will see a shift toward infill and redevelopment. Facilitating this will be fixed-guideway transit systems and the transit oriented developments (TODs) they serve. 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.