Reconnecting America’s Gloria Ohland and Shelley Poticha co-wrote and co-edited this richly illustrated book about streetcars and the tremendous private investment they help generate. There are case studies of the most robust new systems and the ways they’ve been used to leverage ambitious public goals like affordability and high-quality public space, and chapters on planning, financing and the more technical aspects of building a system, and also a history of streetcars as a public/private venture. This work was a partnership with APTA, the Community Streetcar Coalition, and corporate sponsors.

Denver is building 119 miles of rail and 70 new stations in six years, and the CTOD has helped develop a “TOD Typology” for the city and the county that categorizes stations according to seven ”types“ (downtown, urban neighborhood, commuter town center, etc.) and suggests a land use mix, scale, housing types, and station function for each type. CTOD has also helped draft a TOD strategic plan to prioritize planning and resources depending on the development potential of stations. The intent is to help provide certainty for communities and for developers.

TOD is typically a complex public/private partnership. Reconnecting America organized the TOD Marketplace at Railvolution to help bridge the gap between the public and private sectors and provide a forum in which developers, investors, transit agencies, cities and communities can meet, greet and talk about the art of the deal.

The Center for TOD is the only national nonprofit dedicated solely to providing best practices, research and technical assistance to support market-based TOD. We are funded to develop standards and definitions for TOD; guidance for transit system planning as well as performance criteria; models and techniques to help maximize ridership through planning and development near stations; and to provide research support and technical assistance to TOD practitioners.

The Center for TOD created the first national database containing information about every fixed-guideway transit system and station in the U.S., the half-mile radius around all 3,971 stations, and the people who live in these transit zones. The information was integrated in GIS format with data from the 2000 U.S. Census and other sources to create a powerful database that makes it possible to find out who lives near transit, their income, travel behavior, car ownership and household type, as well as information about the density, land uses, block size and distance to the central business district.

The MTC’s TOD policy conditions the allocation of capital funds for transit projects on supportive land use by local governments, in recognition of the fact that people who live, work and play in close proximity to public transit are more likely to use it. The TOD policy addresses several public goals: to improve the cost-effectiveness of transit investments, to ease the Bay Areas chronic housing shortage, to create vibrant new communities, and to help preserve regional open space.

Reconnecting America is one of many San Francisco Bay Area nonprofits, foundations and government agencies that have come together to form the Great Communities Collaborative. The Collaborative hopes to shape development in the Bay Area so that half of new homes built between now and 2030 are located in walkable communities near transit, jobs, shops and services, and are affordable for people of all incomes. Reconnecting America is serving in an advisory role and developing an online TOD Best Practices Clearinghouse.

This report for the Ford Foundation is about the demand for housing near transit from low-income and very-low-income households, and the racial and economic diversity of households living within a half mile of transit. It describes the benefits of diversity and TOD to maintaining the health of neighborhoods and regions, and the policies that can be employed to meet the demand for transit-oriented housing.

How successful have the first generation of San Francisco Bay Area TOD projects been? The project, in collaboration with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and funded by Nelson/Nygaard, looks back over the last wave of TOD for do’s and don’ts for the future. The funding also covers a series of TOD trainings, including the TOD Marketplace event presented with ULI.

The Center for TOD provides technical assistance to cities, transit agencies and community groups who want to implement high-performance TOD in their regions. CTOD is providing technical assistance to groups in New York City, Philadelphia, Boston and Baltimore with the support of the Surdna Foundation. CTOD is helping with communications about TOD-related issues, providing case studies and research about successful TOD projects in diverse mixed-income and low-income neighborhoods, and helping to develop mixed-income strategies for particular neighborhoods. This technical assistance will soon be supplemented with CTOD-initiated research that will result in broadly applicable materials.

Reconnecting America is working with the IBI Group to assess the development potential of 12 stations along the proposed extension of the Gold Line from Pasadena to Pomona in Southern California, and to develop station area plans. Reconnecting America took elected officials and planners from cities along the proposed extension on a tour of TOD in Portland and will tour other cities soon.