Can Bus-Driven Development Tame the Household Budget Bottom Line?

As any New Yorker who has looked for an apartment close to the subway knows, the closer to the station, the higher the rent. A similar scenario exists in the suburbs, where more modestly priced housing tends to be in locations with poor access to public transportation and other amenities.

Together, housing and transportation are the two largest items in the household budget, and they are inextricably linked. Those who live near affordable transit and urban amenities pay more for housing, while those who live farther from transit options pay more in car-related expenses. While the lack of affordable housing is a well-documented problem, high transportation costs are only beginning to receive attention. Wall Street Journal car columnist Dan Neil declared last fall: “Daily transportation has become a household budget-buster,” with car ownership costs that have “gone through the roof.”

Transit-oriented development (TOD), which enables people to walk to public transportation, was first promoted in the 1990s by urban theorists like Peter Calthorpe and Robert Cevero as a solution to this conundrum, in addition to combating sprawl and reducing car pollution. But as TOD has become mainstream, it has become associated with gentrification and higher rents. The cost of building new commuter rail has also skyrocketed, pushing municipalities and transit agencies to consider bus corridors as an alternative. We see bus TOD as a way to extend the economic and environmental benefits associated with rail stations. It can help continue what rail TOD started: avoiding vehicle miles traveled per day translates into lower CO₂ emissions, less money spent on transportation, and better local air quality supporting a healthy, walkable lifestyle.

Route 9: A Transit-Heavy Artery Ripe for Bus TOD

New Jersey’s Route 9 is a six-lane arterial lined with retail strip centers, shopping malls, and cul-de-sac neighborhoods. Despite its car-dominant profile, it is among the busiest transit corridors in the state based entirely on bus service—not a mode commonly associated with development.

With funding from the Federal Transit Administration, NJ Transit retained Perkins Eastman to lead a multidisciplinary team to explore the potential for TOD around Route 9’s existing bus service. Our plan addresses a 21-mile section that stretches through six towns in New Jersey’s Middlesex and Monmouth Counties, where many Manhattan commuters live. The team’s focus on the intersection between market opportunity, physical setting, policy, and regulatory context has yielded surprising opportunities.

The affordable housing units mandated by state law in several New Jersey towns in Middlesex and Monmouth Counties must be built by 2035. Graphics © Perkins Eastman

New Jersey is one of the only states that imposes a minimum obligation on its cities and towns to build affordable housing, with severe legal and financial consequences for noncompliance. As a result, municipalities use multifamily residential projects to meet their obligations.

These developments are often located on a town’s least valuable land, with little or no access to transit and retail amenities, which shifts the transportation burden to residents. This can add more than $13,000 to the average annual household budget in car-related operating expenses. At a time when the Wall Street Journal’s car columnist is advising young people to “delay, if not avoid buying any car,” the two-car household paradigm is on tenuous ground.

Each scenario represents a two-driver household in Old Bridge; one driver works locally, the other works in Manhattan. Walking to the bus within a TOD nearly halves commuting costs.

Changing the Trajectory of Growth

Our study shows that continuing to build car-dependent developments is likely to further exacerbate the affordable housing gap and increase combined housing and transportation costs in the region. At the same time, it demonstrates how rethinking the potential for buses to drive development can close the affordable housing gap and reduce the number of cars on the roads. The result? Less pollution and better-connected suburban neighborhoods.

But changing the trajectory of growth along Route 9—and encouraging more bus use—will require a wholesale reenvisioning of the corridor. Our study demonstrates how the route’s handful of large remaining undeveloped properties and underperforming shopping centers can be leveraged by implementing walkable neighborhood patterns. At the core of the bus TOD vision is welcoming, well-designed commuter facilities located within a high-quality, pedestrian-focused civic space. It is a framework designed to attract public and private investment and introduce compact mixed-use development in an area currently zoned for single-use commercial buildings along wide throughways and vast parking lots.

Denver’s Civic Center Station Center provides welcoming public spaces and local and regional bus service.

This approach can be seen in recent projects such as the I-35W & Lake Street BRT Station in Minneapolis and Civic Center Station in Denver. Both projects demonstrate how design can elevate the bus experience for commuters and residents and better integrate bus service into the surrounding neighborhood fabric.

Perkins Eastman’s Route 9 vision proposes a new bus station in Old Bridge with a pedestrian bridge over the highway and densified housing. The concentric circles represent quarter mile and half-mile distances from the station,
or 5- and 10-minute walks, respectively.

The Route 9 plan proposes a twofold strategy for the corridor that passes primarily through single-family neighborhoods: make strategic infrastructure improvements to link existing neighborhoods that are technically within walking distance of key bus stops but lack safe pedestrian routes; and work with the towns to adopt new zoning that allows accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in areas within a half mile of major bus stops to increase density and affordable housing stock while preserving neighborhood character.

A Model for Bus TOD

These strategies for the Route 9 TOD corridor through Middlesex and Monmouth Counties have the potential to create more than 5,000 units of new housing within walking distance of transit, in addition to rendering 1,000 existing homes walkable. They include a multipronged implementation schedule touching on infrastructure, zoning, and public education. The plan identifies parallel actions for state, regional, and municipal agencies to begin this yearslong endeavor.

Our Route 9 TOD plan offers a model for other similarly challenged suburban locales with commuters in need of economic relief. It provides a smart-growth path to lower household living expenses and a revitalization framework for struggling suburban retail corridors.

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