Transit-Oriented Development

Last fall, Streetsblog reported on the complex relationship between economically disadvantaged neighborhoods and the transit-oriented development projects intended to revitalize them. Often, the same people who stand to gain the most quality-of-life benefits from new transit also face the greatest risk of being displaced by the rising property values associated with TOD.

For decades, Dallas mega-suburb Plano planned and prepared for this moment.

How much extra would you be willing to pay to live near rail transit?

At a meeting with members of the U.S. High-Speed Rail Association Tuesday, House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica softened his stance somewhat on his plan to privatize the Northeast Corridor.

Streetsblog San Francisco reported earlier this week that the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has made a $10 million funding commitment to a mixed-use affordable housing project in the Tenderloin neighborhood, a convenient two-block walk from the nearest Muni stop:

“Transit alone is insufficient to make a real estate market,” said Dena Belzer, the president of Strategic Economics, an urban design consulting firm. Her group is a partner in the Center for Transit-Oriented Development (CTOD), which this week released a new report on the effects of transit expansion on real estate markets.

The Twin Cities region is reassessing the role of highways in its transportation system.

Perhaps the Obama administration's greatest contribution to building more livable, less traffic-choked communities has been the new partnership between three agencies -- DOT, EPA, and HUD -- which are helping towns and cities grow more sustainably, using strategies from brownfield redevelopment to the provision of affordable housing along transit corridors. The agencies have collaborated to issue a series of grants to communities doing this work, but as the lower chamber of Congress shifts to Republican control, the funding for some of those programs is in question.

Reconnecting America has crunched the numbers on which projects won planning grants from the feds last month. Planning awards were announced through three programs: Sustainable Communities Regional Planning (SCRPG), Community Challenge, and TIGER II.