Getting TOD on Track – June 22, 2026
With all the discussions touting the benefits of transit-oriented development, there’s frequently a mismatch between housing supply and transit access
If every discussion about the benefits of transit-oriented development (TOD) led to shovels going into the ground, the current mismatch between housing development and transit access might not exist. In reality, though, it’s an ongoing struggle.
“Historically, federal, state, and local governments in the U.S. have struggled to effectively coordinate land use with transportation investments,” the Urban Institute says in a new report. “Although many U.S. cities have expanded their rapid bus service in recent decades, most have failed to expand their rail systems to keep up with population growth.”
Another hurdle is exclusionary zoning policies that block dense residential construction near transit. “In many communities, buses or trains are too infrequent or slow to encourage people living near transit stops to use these services,” says the Urban Institute’s Tracking Transit-Oriented Housing Development report, released earlier this month.
As of 2022, 67 million homes—approximately 45% of the housing stock—were located within a half mile of bus or rail transit. However, only 10% of housing is within half a mile of frequent bus or rail service arriving at least every 15 minutes in the middle of the day. (In many states, the figure is far lower than that, suggesting that transit-dense states such as New York and Illinois skew the national average upward.) Just 6% of housing nationwide is within half a mile of an urban rail station.
Then there’s the matter of where housing is being built—and frequently, it’s not anywhere near transit. Over the past two decades, nearly nine times as many housing units were built far from transit as near it, according to the Urban Institute.
This is a long-term development assumption that lags more recent trends in automobile use. “It’s well known that younger adults are delaying homeownership under intense affordability pressure,” Realtor.com reported earlier this year. “What’s less discussed is that they’re also delaying car ownership and driving less overall. Meanwhile, as more Americans age in place, a growing number of older adults are expected to age out of driving, raising urgent questions about mobility and independence.”
The Realtor.com report sees “major consequences” for the future of housing in this erosion of the driving habit. “Even as demand grows for neighborhoods where daily life can be lived on foot or by transit, most new homes are still being built for a lifestyle that assumes a car is not only desirable, but also required.”
A combination of public-sector and private-sector factors creates obstacles for would-be TOD. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) cites entrenched zoning that restricts density, thus preventing multifamily or mixed-use development. The Urban Institute notes that transit agencies often lack the mandate or the capacity to acquire land for housing, and rising property values near transit can make acquiring that land prohibitively expensive. Added to which, coordination between local governments and transit agencies is often weak, reducing the effectiveness of TOD initiatives, NAHB said.
However, government can play a role in taking down some of these obstacles. The Urban Institute cites updated zoning codes that have been enacted by cities including Charlotte, Austin and Seattle.
At the federal level, grants can help municipalities purchase underused land near transit. Further, proposed legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives this past January, the Build HUBS Act, would make changes to improve the usability of existing federal infrastructure loan programs. These changes would enable the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Transportation to collaborate on supporting TOD projects that can be built in timely fashion.
All this is to the good. In theory, an idea that has such widespread support shouldn’t be as challenging to implement as it often is, but here we are.