50 Years of Trends in Station Areas across the United States

Objectives and Importance: Building upon earlier work, including the National Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Database established by the former Center for Transit-Oriented Development / Reconnecting America and other studies led by Dr. Renne in collaboration with Dr. Ewing, Ms. Tolford and others, this study will create a database and examine travel behavior, vehicle ownership, demographics, equity, location affordability, built environment measures, and other related topics for all station areas across the United States. The project will build upon previous work that classifies station areas by TOD typology based on walkability, density, and land use mix. The data created for this project will not only allow for the analysis of trends in station areas over the past 50 years but will also be available on an open-data platform that will serve CETOC and anyone in the public to examine several of US DOT strategic goals including performance indicators towards climate and sustainability and net-zero emissions and climate justice. The platform will also enable a greater level of equity analysis toward wealth creation and expanding access to housing and transportation affordability. The data platform will be a geocoded, layered database that will focus on integrating data for neighborhoods around all fixed transit stations across the nation. Data will be included also for the surrounding metropolitan region to allow for comparison of station areas to control areas outside the stations and to see the influence of the stations well beyond the typical half-mile unit of analysis. The study will also compare the similarities and differences between the concepts of TODs and Transit-Oriented Communities (TOCs) and conduct a literature review to identify what this means from a data collection and analysis perspective. The study will analyze which variables are important to collect and how this may have changed over time since the original TOD databased was published in the 2000s. Scope: Update and build a database representing station areas a half-mile from fixed route stations, including about 4,700 stations, representing subway/metro, light rail/tram, commuter rail, intercity passenger rail, bus rapid transit, and ferry stations with available data commuting, vehicle ownership, demographics, equity, location affordability, jobs, and built environment measures from each station resenting 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020. Note that not all stations may have all historical data. The data will then be published on GitHub or a similar platform for public use. Method: (1) Using the National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD) published by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, develop an updated, geocoded list of all station areas (2) Utilizing the US Census, EPA Smart Location Database, National Walkability Index, Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics data, and other available databases including the outdated National TOD Database, develop data for each census tract within each station, by year. (3) Create a typology for each station area based on built environment measures including walkability, density and potentially other measures to classify each station typology as a TOD, Hybrid, and Transit-Adjacent Development. Also examine station areas based on equity variables including race, ethnicity, and income based on prior studies of gentrification in TODs led by Renne and others on the team and within the literature to identify Equitable TODs (ETODs). (4) Using various station classification measures, analyze longitudinal tends and cross-sectional patterns in station areas.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $225000
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3552348337

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Center for Equitable Transit-Oriented Communities (CETOC)

  University of New Orleans
  New Orleans, LA  United States 
• Project Managers:

  Kline, Robin

  Tian, Guang

• Performing Organizations:

  Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton

  Boca Raton, FL  United States  33431
• Principal Investigators:

  Renne, John

• Start Date: 20231001
• Expected Completion Date: 20251031
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Built environment; Bus terminals; Databases; Demographics; Equity; Ferry terminals; Rail transit stations; Travel behavior; Trend (Statistics)
• Geographic Terms: United States
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Public Transportation; Terminals and Facilities;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01902114
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Center for Equitable Transit-Oriented Communities (CETOC)
• Contract Numbers: 69A3552348337
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Dec 14 2023 11:31PM