Areas within walking distance of transit stops contain nearly half of Connecticut’s households and two-thirds of its jobs, while covering just 9% of the land, according to a new report released Monday at the YIMBYtown housing conference in New Haven.
The Regional Plan Association study found that Connecticut’s transit zones — areas within a half-mile of rail stations or quarter-mile of bus stops — concentrate 48% of households and 65% of jobs on only 280,000 acres of the state’s 3.2 million total acres.
Pete Harrison, RPA’s Connecticut director, said the report “lays out the vast and urgent opportunity for the state to focus its capacity and resources on getting the most out of this area to grow the state’s economy and protect its environment.”
However, the report showed that most housing near transit lacks sufficient density to support robust public transportation service. Only 317,000 housing units, representing 22% of the state’s total housing stock, are located in areas dense enough to sustain regular bus service.
“The shortage of compact, walkable, and Transit-Oriented Communities in the state is not driven by free market forces, but rather by restrictive land use regulations,” the report states, noting that 99.6% of Connecticut’s zoned residential land permits only single-family housing.
The analysis found stark demographic differences between transit zones and other areas.
Virtually all households earning less than $50,000 annually — about 138,800 households — live within transit zones, while only 21.5% of households earning $150,000 or more reside near transit.
The state operates 54 rail stations across seven of nine regional planning areas, with the Western Connecticut region containing the most stations at 24, including Greenwich, Stamford and Norwalk. There are about 14,800 bus stops statewide, with the Hartford region having the largest share at 4,730 stops.
The state Department of Transportation’s 2022-26 capital plan allocated $3.8 billion for transit infrastructure, with $2.2 billion from state funds and $1.6 billion from federal sources.
The RPA recommended that state agencies develop a framework to identify opportunities for transit-oriented communities, prioritize affordable housing subsidies in vulnerable areas and update land-use regulations to facilitate denser development near transit.
“This report powerfully demonstrates how Connecticut can reverse this trend by capitalizing on the opportunity to build more housing and generate economic development near transit to create more prosperity, affordability and diversity,” said Tom Wright, president and CEO of RPA.
The study was funded by Arnold Ventures and builds on Connecticut’s ongoing efforts to address a housing shortage of roughly 94,000 missing affordable rental units statewide.
YIMBYtown is an annual conference for supporters of the “Yes In My Back Yard” movement, which advocates for building more housing to address shortages and affordability problems — the opposite of “Not In My Back Yard” residents who typically oppose new development in their neighborhoods.
