Studies

Transit Oriented Development

(TOD) Strategic Plan

Transit-oriented development, or TOD, is a type of community development that includes a mixture of housing, office, retail and/or other amenities integrated into a walkable environment and located within a half-mile of high-frequency public transportation.  In coordination with the rapid transit corridor studies, the Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Strategic Plan was created to identify ways of leveraging the land use and economic development potential of transit investment in the Central Indiana region. 

Each rapid transit corridor being studied has unique issues and opportunities from a land use perspective.  The TOD Strategic Plan analyzes the regional market dynamics and land use characteristics to assess the potential for transit oriented development along the planned transit corridors.

This Plan was developed in coordination with the rapid transit corridor studies (Red, Blue, Green, and Purple Lines) and has helped to inform decisions regarding routing, station locations, and implementation phasing.  The TOD Strategic Plan also considered potential tools that, if implemented, could provide some funding for improvements to infrastructure near rapid transit stations or transit operating costs.  This type of funding is referred to as "value capture", because as the value of land goes up near planned or constructed rapid transit stations, some of that increase can be captured and used in part to continue to invest in the transit line that caused the increase in land value.

To guide future corridor and station area development, the Plan also addresses important urban planning and station area design principles to support TOD. Six system-wide station area typologies are applied to potential station areas to inform land use, scale, density and infrastructure needs for TOD.

Toward the end of the document are information sheets, one for each proposed station at the time of the TOD Strategic Plan's development.  These sheets provide land use data and rank each station within the proposed rapid transit system regarding its potential for near-term TOD success, as well as providing some recommendations to increase each station's potential for TOD success.