The subway is the big expensive investment. In theory, businesses and housing etc would develop around the stations. Like how suburbs develop around train stations.
In theory. The commuter rail I sometimes take follows an old rail right of way. Some of the stations are in fairly developed areas. But some of those, like Concord, presumably predate even the original rail. And a lot of the towns are pretty spread out. You can't walk to much until you get to the last two stops in the city proper.
I imagine that at least one factor there is that building up is prohibited by zoning—a super brief glance at Concord's zoning map & code it looks like the only kind of residential buildings you can build anywhere without special permission are single-family.
Now there are surely people living there who would argue that this zoning has protected the shape and nature of the town they that they prefer, but the flip side of that coin is that, at $1.4m, a median home in Concord costs more than 3x that of the country overall.
There's probably some truth in that. On the other hand, Concord is a pretty far-flung suburb; you're probably over 30 minutes to get to Cambridge without heavy traffic. I believe the prison out there is closed now but don't know what the plans are for the land.
Sure, I wouldn't imagine it'd turn into a cluster of skyscrapers if the restrictions were not there, but I would imagine there might be some small apartment buildings near the train station. New Jersey has had some impressive housing changes happen by opening areas near transit to development in not-dissimilar environments.
Apparently, the governor is interested in using it for housing development but I'm sure that will be tied up in the courts for years--especially with it being Concord.
Well, if I’m going into the city 9 to 5ish I’ll usually take commuter rail because it’s less painful even if it takes as long as driving. But I do need to drive to and park at the nearby commuter rail station.
And then landowners who were “smart” enough to own land where this ends up going in get to reap all the financial upside, instead of the public which actually invested in that infrastructure.
Just imagine if the public could capture the (financial) upside it produces, then it could apply that money to do the same thing down the road, then do the same thing again down the road further.
In some countries the transit companies (public or private) also become the landowners of the adjacent areas - this would be the "rail plus property" model.
In fact, the rail plus property model allows the rail operate to better capture their added value, so it applies even in "private" scenarios. The most famous example would be Tokyo.
The goal shouldn't be for the public to be able to reap direct financial benefits from the induced activity around transit hubs, the goal should be to firstly to incentivize and maintain affordable, high quality, sustainable transit, secondly to provide more and better economic opportunities.
Same in Switzerland, with the added quirk/bonus that shops in train stations are allowed to open on Sundays, when shops outside of train stations usually can't open due to employment laws. This wasn't originally meant as a way to increase attractiveness of businesses in train stations and other public transit places, rather as a way to make sure that people travelling have services available while on their way. But nowadays it's definitely a big reason for people to come specifically shop in train stations on the weekend.
I don’t see how that is a version of what llamaimperative posts.
If anything, TIF increases rewards for landowners who do nothing or otherwise underutilize land. Taxing the product of work to make a piece of land beneficial for society is amazingly backwards.
The proper direction to go in is marginal land value tax rates, with increasing penalties the longer a spaces remains unused.
That just encourages corporate ownership of property (unless you mitigate that), but overall I don’t know why we’d disincentivize moving closer to a new workplace or into a smaller home once it will do for you.
