Transit-Oriented Housing Gains Ground Nationwide

For decades, transit-oriented development has been the urbanist answer to two of America’s biggest headaches: housing shortages and traffic congestion. The strategy has gained real traction, but a national analysis suggests the country is still building far more homes around cars than trains and buses.

Nearly 67 million housing units — about 45 percent of the nation’s housing stock — were located within a half-mile of transit stops in 2022, according to an Urban Institute analysis highlighted by Bloomberg CityLab. That marks a 36 percent increase over the last two decades and reflects years of state and local efforts to steer development toward transit corridors.

The findings underscore how deeply transit-oriented development has become embedded in the pro-housing playbook. From New York to Los Angeles, policymakers have increasingly paired zoning reforms with transit investments, allowing denser residential projects near rail stations and major bus routes.

But the report also illustrates the limits of that progress. While housing near transit has grown substantially, only about 10 percent of U.S. housing is located near transit service that arrives every 15 minutes or better. In many major metro areas, access to frequent service remains even lower.

The strongest performers combined transit expansion with aggressive land-use planning.

Seattle and Salt Lake City more than doubled their housing supply near rail stations between 1980 and 2022, according to the report. Researchers credited growth-management policies that restricted greenfield development and encouraged infill construction around transit hubs. New York led the nation in sheer volume, adding more than 682,000 housing units near rail stations during the same period.

Meanwhile, many fast-growing Sun Belt markets continue to lean heavily on sprawl. Atlanta, Dallas and Houston ranked among the nation’s least transit-oriented large metros with less than half of their housing located near bus or rail service. Transit-oriented housing accounted for less than 5 percent of overall housing growth in each market over the last four decades.

The findings arrive as states and municipalities increasingly eye transit-oriented opportunities.

In Philadelphia, SEPTA’s Transit Oriented Communities program is seeking development opportunities on land it owns near transit lines across the region.

The program aims to build more housing and walkable communities for commuters while generating revenue for the transit system.

— Holden Walter-Warner