Transit-oriented development (TOD) is often celebrated for the housing it creates, the economic growth it sparks, and the walkable communities it helps shape.

These benefits are real, but they only tell part of the story.

For transportation agencies, TOD is more than a development strategy. It’s a way to strengthen ridership, guide capital investment, and get more out of existing infrastructure. Today, that perspective should be woven into long-range multimodal corridor planning to maximize aging assets, strengthen regional mobility, support housing goals, and create more resilient transportation networks. 

This approach is particularly important across New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, where agencies are balancing significant State of Good Repair (SOGR) needs with changing travel patterns, housing demand, and constrained funding.

Increasingly, agencies are recognizing that TOD and SOGR are not separate conversations. They are deeply connected.

A well-maintained transit system provides the reliability and accessibility that sucessful TOD depends on. In turn, well-planned TOD can help strengthen the value of SOGR investments by supporting and encouraging ridership, improving access, and aligning transporation spending with broader regional goals. 

For Sharon Tepper, Northeast Transportation Planning Lead at VHB, the connection is straightforward: "State of good repair and growth aren't competing priorities. They need each other. The most effective investments strengthen system reliability today while positioning the network to serve future demand," said Tepper.

That philosophy increasingly shapes how transportation agencies evaluate transit capital planning investments, collaborate with municipalities, and think about the future of their systems.

Maximizing What Already Exists

For decades, expanding transit often meant building new infrastructure. While expansion remains essential in growing regions, today’s fiscal realities have shifted attention to getting more value from existing assets.

The Northeast illustrates that challenge particularly well. Many commuter railroads and transit systems were built decades, and in some cases well over a century, ago. These systems must be modernized while continuing to move millions of passengers every day. As travel patterns have evolved with hybrid work schedules, residential development, and shifting employment centers, increased off-peak service could limit windows for critical modernization efforts.

That is where TOD and SOGR begin to intersect.

According to Tepper, a station cannot fully support surrounding growth if platforms, elevators, signals, drainage systems, or pedestrian connections are unreliable or outdated. Likewise, investments in station modernization, accessibility improvements, or rail infrastructure generate greater value when surrounding land use supports increased ridership and transit access.

Rather than defaulting to large expansion projects, agencies are increasingly asking whether existing infrastructure can perform better. That might mean operating more frequent trains, adding rail cars to increase capacity, modernizing signal systems, improving station circulation, upgrading accessibility, strengthening resiliency during extreme weather events, or giving buses greater priority through traffic signal technology. Although certain improvements can be accomplished independently by our transit agencies, collaboration with ridership and the municipalities served increases the utility of each.

As Tepper noted, “Transportation planners constantly evaluate where growth is occurring, where housing is being built, and how employment patterns are changing before determining where investments can have the greatest impact.”

In that context, state of good repair is not only about preserving the past. It is about preparing existing transit assets to support future growth.

TOD Is Not Just About Development

It is important to see TOD as a transportation investment strategy.

“We know that transit maximizes the value of the places that it serves,” Tepper said. “People choose to live in communities that are well served by transit.” The relationship works both ways. “When it’s done right,” she continued, “development can help maximize the value of the property around that transit.”

That reciprocal relationship is changing how agencies think about their own assets. Transit agencies often own stations, parking facilities, maintenance properties, rights-of-way, and other strategically located land that can help address regional priorities beyond transportation.

Housing affordability has become one of the clearest examples. Tepper points to New Jersey Transit, where underutilized agency properties are being evaluated for their potential to support state housing goals while strengthening the transit system. “Housing cost is a huge issue for our region,” she said. “Agencies are being relied upon to think about how they can utilize their underutilized properties to stimulate housing production and provide more affordable options in the communities they serve.”

A station accessibility project, for example, may be necessary to meet mobility and equity goals. But when coordinated with local land use planning, pedestrian improvements, and private investment, that same project can also strengthen ridership, improve customer experience, and support broader economic activity.

The Best Projects Don’t Stop at Agency Boundaries

Transit agencies may own the stations and operate the service, but they do not control zoning, local streets, utilities, sidewalks, curb space, parking policy, or economic development policies. As a result, TOD succeeds only when multiple organizations pursue shared objectives. “These projects depend on strong collaboration across jurisdictions, with each agency and municipality contributing its perspective and working toward outcomes that serve the wider public,” Tepper explains.

She points to New York City’s Greater East Midtown rezoning as an example. While the Long Island Rail Road invested billions to construct Grand Central Madison and bring direct commuter rail service to Manhattan’s East Side, New York City simultaneously updated zoning regulations to encourage new commercial development that could capitalize on the additional transit capacity.

Developers, in turn, contributed improvements to the public realm, including new pedestrian connections, station entrances, and accessibility enhancements that benefited commuters, as well as neighborhood residents and businesses. The transportation investment and land use strategy reinforced one another. Neither would have delivered the same value independently.

Every Investment Should Solve More Than One Problem

Transportation agencies can no longer afford projects that solve only a single issue.

“We often have one shot to take with each investment — we have to accomplish these multiple goals at once,” Tepper said. The most successful investments are those that advance multiple objectives simultaneously. SOGR investments keep the system safe and functioning. TOD helps those investments generate broader value. Together, they create a framework for making smarter decisions about where limited resources can have the greatest impact. 

Looking Beyond Today’s Challenges

Transportation executives often talk about “future-proofing” their systems, but Tepper cautions against treating that as a prediction of the future. Instead, she suggests, it’s about building flexibility into today’s decisions.

“Success is about integration,” she says. “It’s about recognizing our transit networks as interconnected systems.” That means recognizing that transportation decisions influence housing, economic development, accessibility, workforce mobility, resiliency, and community growth — and vice versa.

When transit agencies, municipalities, developers, and regional planners coordinate their efforts, each investment becomes more valuable than it would have been on its own.

TOD and SOGR are not competing priorities. They are complementary strategies. One strengthens the physical foundation of the transit system. The other helps that system support the communities, corridors, and economies around it.

Together, they represent a more integrated way to plan for the future of transportation and Northeast regional growth.