Housing and transit planning go naturally together.
New York City has, by some measures, the most expensive housing in the nation. Renting a typical apartment costs almost $4,000 a month, according to Zillow. That’s more than in any other U.S. city with more than 100,000 residents. (In terms of home values adjusted for apartment size, New York also dominates the list, at fourth place.) New York’s rental rate is more than two times what average renters pay in cities like Charlotte, Houston and Phoenix.
The city’s high housing costs impose a considerable burden, but New Yorkers have something residents of those other cities don’t: access to an extensive and (despite grumblings, mostly) effective transit system. New York City’s subway and bus network isn’t just a nice thing to have. It’s also a money saver that enables residents to avoid the costs of car ownership and operation, which amount to thousands of dollars a year per household.
While 56% of New York City households live without a car, that’s true of less than 10% of households in any of those other cities. As a result, the combined costs of housing and transportation in New York and Phoenix wind up being the same for the typical U.S. household.
Building more housing and creating guaranteed affordable units are unquestionably necessary steps to reduce the cost of living. But equally key to achieving that goal is ensuring that the city grows its housing supply in close connection with its transit system. That requires deliberate, coordinated planning — in some cases, adding more housing near transit, and in others, adding more transit to areas with a lot of housing.
The location of New Yorkers’ homes helps determine whether they use transit
New York City has the nation’s most extensive transit network, and most of its residents have good access to it. About 44% of denizens live within a quarter-mile — about a five-minute walk — of the closest station on the subway map (including the Staten Island Railway); an additional 28% live within a half-mile. (I’ll refer to the subway and the Staten Island Railway collectively as the “subway” for this article.)
Nevertheless, some people are left out: About a quarter of the population — in areas like Mill Basin in Brooklyn, Fresh Meadows in Queens or the North Shore on Staten Island, among many other neighborhoods — resides too far from a subway station to make it an easy part of their daily routine. About 1.2 million New Yorkers live more than a mile from the nearest such station.
Though almost all New Yorkers live within easy distance of a bus route — including express bus routes, which are especially important on the edges of the five boroughs — and others live close to the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North commuter rail systems, distance to the subway, which has a flat fare, great coverage and frequent service, plays a huge role in influencing peoples’ likelihood of using transit. Citywide, a majority of workers who live within a quarter-mile of a subway station commute by transit, but fewer than 30% of those who live more than a mile from a station do.
Residents near subway stations are also much less likely to own a car. Among households within a quarter-mile of a subway stop, 66% have no vehicle — compared to just 21% among those living further away.
If everyone in the city lived within a quarter-mile of a subway station and had the traveling patterns of residents in those locations today, 200,000 additional commuters would take transit to work citywide — a 12% increase. And the city would have 400,000 more zero-car households.
That kind of citywide subway access could save New Yorkers thousands of dollars each year by allowing them to get rid of their cars. Evidence suggests that fewer people driving and more people riding transit would also mean less congestion and less air pollution. Transit use also means less need for parking, which can reduce the cost of new housing construction and free up space for homebuilding.
Opening up more corridors to car-free households could also spread housing demand more evenly across the city, lowering costs. Coupled with City of Yes zoning reforms that increased buildability in low-density neighborhoods and dramatically scaled back parking requirements in new construction, more transit could unlock tens of thousands of new units.
Achieving those cost savings for households can be accomplished by both increasing density near existing lines and expanding the transit network. Together, those changes can produce a more transit-oriented city with a greater supply of affordable housing.
Accelerating transit-oriented development
New York City has always been oriented toward its subway system, and natural demand and wise city planning continue to make it even more so. Over the past 15 years, almost 60% of newly occupied housing units were located within a quarter-mile of stations; an additional 27% were within a half-mile of stations.
In 2015, the extension of the 7 Train to Hudson Yards was funded by a tax-increment financing system — a value-capture tool that collects increased property taxes paid to fund infrastructure — that leveraged a massive upzoning designed to enable the construction of the approximately 4,000-unit development there.
In Brooklyn, the City engaged in a series of upzonings along the Fourth Avenue corridor, changes that transformed a previously low-slung, automobile-dominated space well served by the R train into a hub of apartments.
Those City of Yes zoning reforms passed by the City Council late last year legalized middle-scale apartment buildings on large streets in districts near rail transit. These parts of the city had previously only allowed low-density homes. This change will likely have major impacts; more than 90% of buildings near the subway are now three stories or less.
Blind spots
Not every development change has fully incorporated the need to link transit and housing. The Gowanus redevelopment zone in Brooklyn, expected to add about 8,500 housing units, is largely located further than a quarter-mile from subway stations. While residents won’t have to walk too much further than that to jump on a train, based on existing evidence, several hundred new residents will end up driving instead of taking transit because of that distance.
In Queens’ College Point neighborhood, the City is readying a plan to add 3,000 housing units on the site of the former Flushing Airport — more than a mile from a subway station. Based on experience, that site will attract almost 1,000 fewer daily transit commuters, and require parking for more than 1,000 more cars, than it would if it were within a quarter-mile of a subway station — only possible if new transit facilities were constructed there or if the development were located near an existing station.
And coordinating transit and housing requires more than just adjacency. Despite its new apartment buildings, for example, Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue remains relatively inhospitable to pedestrians; it is dominated by five lanes of car traffic, has few trees and lacks the comfortable mix of public spaces and retail that make nearby Fifth and Seventh Avenues so appealing.
Creating a neighborhood that’s more walkable boosts transit ridership, especially for people with disabilities.
The road (and track) ahead
One key need is continuing to implement major zoning reforms designed to increase housing availability near transit. The planned Interborough Express — which is proposed to link outer Brooklyn and Queens and which will be completed after 2030 — is expected to carry 160,000 daily riders. A potential rezoning along its route could accommodate 70,000 additional homes, leveraging the new transit line as a mechanism to absorb the city’s growth while ensuring it occurs in a way that limits the overall cost of living to future residents.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, similarly, should accelerate the redevelopment of land it and other governmental entities own in areas near transit stations. Public agencies can take advantage of federal policies and funding opportunities and lead the development of these neighborhoods, including funneling affordable housing subsidies toward those projects, ensuring that every subway station is surrounded by at least medium-density homes and providing transit access to New Yorkers who may need it most.
Simultaneously, the City should make sure that the neighborhoods near transit are walkable, landscaped and offer access to public services like libraries. These investments can ensure that housing near transit is located in communities people find appealing and livable.
Finally, New York City should further expand and improve its transit network to better serve the housing that’s not accessible enough. This could mean, for example, a new subway line connecting College Point, Flushing, Queens College and Jamaica. It might mean reactivating once pie-in-the-sky plans to extend the 1 line to Red Hook, Brooklyn, a rare transit desert in the city’s most populous borough. Or it could mean creating express subway links that dramatically improve the transit system’s speed.
These transit improvements should focus on the subway — but also improve bus service and commuter rail lines enough to make them as attractive to potential riders as the subway currently is. Better transit could help reduce the cost of living for thousands of residents and maximize the impact of reforms that make the city’s housing more affordable.