Transform’s Leadership on Transit-Oriented Communities 

Last month, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) finalized the framework for the Bay Area’s Transit-Oriented Communities (TOC) Policy. The framework will guide how cities qualify for regional transportation funding based on their progress toward building housing near transit.

While the vote marks an important milestone, the TOC Policy is the result of more than two decades of advocacy to align transportation investments with housing, climate, and equity goals. Transform has been part of that effort from the beginning in the Bay Area, championing transit-oriented development as a housing, climate, and equity solution.

Spearheading a movement for transit-oriented development

In the early 2000s, the Bay Area was expanding its transit system but often failed to plan communities around it. New stations were frequently surrounded by parking lots or low-density zoning rather than homes, stores, and comfortably walkable streets. 

In 2004, Transform helped lead a regional coalition that released It Takes a Village, a report calling for stronger regional policies to support dense, walkable neighborhoods near transit. The report argued that transit investments should be paired with housing density, limits on excessive parking structures, and safer walking and biking access to stations. It found that Bay Area residents would save over $1.8 billion annually on transportation costs — an average of $600 per household — through transit-oriented development. We would save billions more indirectly from reduced health costs, less time lost to congestion, and a stronger tax base.

Those ideas helped shape the region’s first transit-oriented development policy, adopted by MTC in 2005. While groundbreaking at the time, the policy applied primarily to new transit stations and offered few incentives for cities to adopt supportive land use policies.

Fewer parking spots, more transit

Over the following years, Transform and our partners continued pushing the region to connect transportation investments with housing outcomes. Through research, coalition advocacy, and reports such as Parking Revolution: Housing Solution, Transform highlighted how parking requirements and car-oriented land use policies were limiting the potential of transit investments and making housing more expensive across the Bay Area. 

At the same time, regional planning efforts like Plan Bay Area reinforced the need for more homes near transit as a strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support affordable, walkable communities.

These efforts ultimately helped lead to the adoption of MTC’s Transit-Oriented Communities Policy in 2022. The updated policy expanded the scope of the earlier TOD framework and established expectations for local jurisdictions around housing density near transit, affordable housing production and preservation, parking management, and safe access for people walking, biking, and taking transit.

Just as importantly, the policy began linking progress on these goals to eligibility for regional transportation funding.

Transform continues to campaign for policies supporting infill development

The Bay Area has invested billions of dollars in transit infrastructure. To fully realize the benefits of those investments, the region must also build the homes and neighborhoods that allow people to live near transit and rely less on cars.

In recent months, MTC’s votes on January 28 and February 25 helped solidify how the TOC Policy will interact with major regional funding programs like the One Bay Area Grant, reinforcing the principle that transportation funding should support communities planning to co-locate housing with sustainable transportation.

For Transform, the TOC Policy reflects a long-standing belief that transportation and housing policy must work together. The work to implement the TOC Policy continues, but the progress made so far shows what sustained regional advocacy can achieve. Transform will continue working with partners across the Bay Area to ensure that the policy delivers more affordable homes, stronger communities, and a transportation system that works for everyone.