Transit-based housing in California: evidence on ridership impacts

Clustering of housing development around rail stations holds promise not only for increasing transit ridership, but also yielding important environmental and social benefits. This paper examines evidence on the degree to which existing housing complexes near rail stations in California have encouraged transit usage. For Bay Area cities served by BART, residents living near rail stations were around five times as likely to commute by rail transit as the average resident-worker in the same city. The strongest predictors of whether station-area residents commuted by rail was whether their destination was near a rail station and whether they could park for free at their destination. Neighbourhood density and proximity of housing to stations were also related to rail travel. The paper concludes that if transit-based housing is to reap significant mobility and environmental benefits, it must be accompanied by transit-based employment growth and programmes that pass on true costs to motorists and parkers.