Abstract Manager

Housing affordability is a challenge facing many Canadians today. The housing crisis is anticipated to persist into the future unless serious action is taken. By 2030, the CMHC has estimated a need for 3.5 million more units to be developed than what is anticipated in order to restore housing affordability. 

More communities are realizing that there is a role for public transit to play in encouraging housing development and improving affordability. There is a growing interest in Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) models as a means for doing so. TODs deliver higher density developments connected to, integrated with or nearby transit stations to create complete and accessible communities with employment and residential densities that support higher-order transit. TOD not only creates the opportunity to efficiently increase the supply of housing, it also offers more households greater access to transit while also facilitating greater ridership potential for the transit project. There are therefore broad benefits to society created by co-developing housing and transit in this way.

The objective of this presentation is to provide guidance for how to evaluate the benefits of TOD within transit business cases, specifically when the transit investment unlocks new development potential which would not have been permitted otherwise. Historically, transportation appraisals have rarely estimated these impacts. In this presentation we will make the case for capturing the value of the development investment in the transit business case when the investment is induced by the transit investment. We will look at how an appraisal which captures transit and development will allow for agencies to achieve greater overall benefits.

The methodology we will present is an integrated approach for estimating the incremental impact of TOD unlocked by a transit investment in the broader transit business case. The first methodological step involves estimating user benefits from the transit impacts under fixed land use i.e., land use excluding the impact of the TOD. Then, in our model, the user benefits under the fixed land use assumption are supplemented with an estimate of the change in land value associated with the TOD to capture the benefits to new users.

In addition to the above, this presentation will include a jurisdictional review of the benefits achieved from an integrated development approach. We will also present a jurisdictional review of how other agencies are approaching this type of integrated appraisal to draw valuable lessons for future transportation decision-makers seeking to deliver wider development benefits.