Travel of TOD Residents in the San Francisco Bay Area: Examining the Impact of Affordable Housing

Legislation and public policies in California incentivize housing development near high-quality transit nodes to meet climate change and affordability goals. In general, transit-oriented development (TOD) encourages transit ridership and active travel while reducing the number and distance of car trips. BART has been active in encouraging affordable TOD in the region; the agency adopted a TOD policy in 2016 that aims to build 20,000 housing units on land it owns, 35 percent of which must be affordable to low and very low income households. As of July 2019, 2,555 total housing units were in BART’s TOD portfolio, 29 percent of which were affordable units. BART and the Great Communities Collaborative commissioned a study of how residents in TOD housing travel compared to residents of other housing developments located more than a mile away from BART stations.