Photo by Steve Adams | Banker & Tradesman Staff
Despite having one of North America’s most extensive commuter rail and subway networks, Greater Boston has some of the least-dense areas around transit stations, according to a new report.
Even most stations on the MBTA’s Red Line in Boston and Cambridge, the system’s busiest, don’t meet the minimum density requirements of the MBTA Communities law, a joint analysis by The Boston Foundation’s Boston Indicators division and advocacy group TransitMatters found.
Only the Charles/MGH, Park Street, Central Square, Porter Square and JFK/UMass stations have more than 15 dwelling units per acre in the areas within a half-mile.
It’s a situation mirrored on all the T’s rapid transit lines, with the Green Line’s branches in Brookline and Allston representing dense outliers, and even worse along its extensive commuter rail network. Even a station like Boston Landing or Forest Hills, which both have seen significant commercial development in recent years, only have 10.8 and 11.8 dwelling units per acre near the stations, respectively.
“If you were building this system today, people would think you’re insane to provide this much coverage and this level of service,” TransitMatters Executive Director Jarred Johnson, a report co-author, said in an interview with Banker & Tradesman.
The report, entitled “Transit-Supportive Density in Greater Boston,” argues that areas around commuter rail and subway stations should be upzoned to allow at least 16 dwelling units per acre within a half-mile of a station, typically considered the minimum amount of density required to support new train lines or subways in other parts of the world.
That figure represents roughly an area of two- and three-family homes similar to parts of Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood.
With state officials pursuing a plan to electrify the commuter rail system and increase its frequency dramatically their key strategy to bust worst-in-the-nation congestion, the issue could come to a head sooner rather than later.
“The regional rail vision does cost real dollars,” report co-author and Boston Indicators Executive Director Luc Schuster said in an interview. “Practically implementing that would depend on meaningful density increases.”
In Newton, state housing officials and Congressman Jake Auchincloss threatened to withhold funding for new commuter rail stations in the city if it didn’t pass zoning to comply with the MBTA Communities law. State leaders should consider that kind of trade-off as transit service improves, Johnson and housing advocate Jesse Kanson-Benanav said during a panel discussion Thursday morning following the report’s release.
“If you’re trying to take resources, use resources from the state, when you’re not actually doing your part in building the housing that meets the needs of our of our communities, I think that’s a conversation. That’s where the conversation needs to go in the future,” Kanson-Benanav, head of the pro-housing group Abundant Housing MA, said.
The state already makes funding from a large number of grant programs contingent on MBTA Communities compliance, he said.
“Every time a train stops, it takes time.[..] You can make a very rational, numbers-based argument that, if this community isn’t growing, ridership isn’t going to grow,” Johnson said. “Maybe the train just stops there less frequently because there’s less demand there.”
The report contrasts metro areas like Washington, D.C. and Toronto that proactively upzoned areas around transit stations, creating significant ridership and fare revenue for their transit agencies and more housing to accommodate demand driven by their successful economies. Toronto, in particular, has become famous for permitting tall towers along its regional rail and subway lines, despite dedicating much of its land area to sprawling, leafy single-family neighborhoods.
Panelists repeatedly noted how Greater Boston residents frequently tell pollsters they are very concerned about the cost of housing and want more housing built to fix that.
With the state facing a housing crisis and the MBTA frequently short of funding, Schuster said in an interview that adding density around stations would be a form of “free lunch” by adding paying riders to the T without needing to add new trains or other infrastructure to meet the demand, although more frequent train service would be needed to properly support additional density.
“If we allow for the region to grow, it very quickly becomes a positive-sum game,” he said. “That added density generates more taxes and fares to fund public services like the T.”
