Building affordable housing around transit

One step by MTC can help solve two of Bay Area's most pressing needs

The Bay Area has the opportunity to take one major step towards solving two epic crises: our lack of affordable housing for people of all incomes and our severely strained transportation system.

Today most newly built housing sprawls over our precious greenspace and requires a car for every trip. At the same time, cash-strapped cities place big-box development adjacent to regional transit centers, generating tremendous car traffic, wasting the potential of our transit assets, and forcing the public to endure higher transit fares, new taxes, or cuts in transit service.

Instead we could rein in sprawl and ensure that future transit stations are surrounded by livable, walkable communities with good jobs and housing.

In early 2005 the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), our regional transportation agency, will update its Regional Transit Expansion Program. MTC is considering a policy that would require cities to plan for significant housing within a transit zone before MTC will allocate funds for transit expansion. This would include every major transit proposal in the Bay Area. MTC would provide funding to help municipalities develop these station plans.

The Sierra Club and a coalition of community organizations led by the Transportation and Land Use Coalition (TALC) strongly support such a policy. "It just makes sense to put homes, jobs, and shops near transit. When we build near transit, we address our housing crisis, reduce traffic, and take development pressure off our working farms and natural areas," said Jeremy Madsen of Greenbelt Alliance, a coalition member.

TALC's recent report It Takes a Transit Village revealed that focusing new housing around transit stations will also have massive financial benefits for Bay Area residents, with transportation savings of $1.8 billion per year, an average of $600 per household.

As with all policies, however, the devil is in the details. The impact of MTC's proposal (if adopted) depends on the quality of the criteria and the mechanisms for implementation. MTC's current proposal requires cities to plan for a certain amount of housing within a half-mile radius of new stations, an area TALC calls the "transit opportunity zone". A second proposal calls for a certain amount of housing plus jobs in these zones. TALC and affiliated organizations are concerned that these proposals are not strong enough to create the livable, walkable transit villages necessary for a sustainable Bay Area future. TALC is recommending that MTC's policy for the transit-opportunity zones include six points.

• The amount of housing required should be high enough to absorb at least half the new housing expected in the Bay Area.
• Development of office space should not be allowed to substitute for housing development. We don't have an office-park crisis; we have a housing crisis.
• The policy should include mechanisms to promote affordable housing. Families with lower income levels have the greatest need for public transit and are most likely to use it regularly.
• Big-box developments, such as Costco and Wal-Mart, should not be allowed.
• Cities should be required to study minimization of parking in the transit-opportunity zone. Excessive parking requirements result in expanses of pavement that discourage pedestrians and replace opportunities for more vital land uses.
• Cities should be required to develop bicycle and pedestrian plans for safe routes within the transit-opportunity zone.

Projects included in the policy would include:

• Sonoma/Marin commuter rail;
• improved bus service in Oakland and Berkeley;
• Muni Third Street light rail;
• rail extensions in Eastern Contra Costa County, between Fremont and the South Bay, and elsewhere.

Think how much more effective each of these projects will be if it can be tied in with transit-oriented land use.

MTC's revision of its current-transit expansion program presents a tremendous opportunity to promote sustainability in the Bay Area and curb poorly planned development, but there is a real risk that without the inclusion of these elements, MTC will create a watered-down policy that will have no real effect on future Bay Area growth.

What You Can Do - This month's key action

We have enclosed a post card in this Yodeler, urging the MTC to adopt these policies. Please fill it out and return it, or write a letter in your own words. (If your card is lost or missing, call (510) 848-0800 to request a new copy.)

For more information, or to read TALC's complete report, It Takes a Transit Village, visit www.transcoalition.org or call the TALC office at (510) 740-3101.

Stuart Cohen and Rachel Kraai, TALC