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Transportopia News & Views Transit, Housing and Living Well
- Rick L'Amie
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
This week’s episode of the Transportopia podcast features a rich conversation with Jarrett Walker, author of Human Transit, about designing networks for freedom and access — not just speed or shiny vehicles. To go along with that discussion, our News & Views roundup looks at how some big-picture trends are playing out on the ground: housing near transit, explosive growth in the Sun Belt, accessibility gains, and ridership finally rebounding where service improves.
Below is a written version of the segment, with a bit more detail and links if you’d like to dig deeper.
Housing, Zoning, and Transit: Michael Casey’s AP Deep Dive
The Associated Press published an important context piece by reporter Michael Casey that’s worth your time. The article asks a straightforward question with big implications: What happens when we start building many more homes near transit — and make it realistic to live with fewer cars?
Casey’s story follows examples from across the country, including Boston, Los Angeles, and several fast-growing suburbs, where state and local leaders are loosening zoning rules, allowing taller buildings near stations, and steering multifamily and affordable housing into transit-rich corridors.
You can read the full AP article here:
The idea is to tackle two crises at once: the severe shortage of affordable housing and the need for better transit access. Instead of treating land use and transit as separate conversations, these policies acknowledge that transit succeeds when more people actually live near reliable service. That’s one of the core themes Jarrett Walker has argued for years — and this piece shows how that thinking is beginning to reshape policy.
Phoenix’s West Valley: Can Transit Catch Up With Growth?
In Phoenix, planners are circulating new concepts for expanding transit in the rapidly growing West Valley — one of the fastest-changing regions in the United States. The city’s latest outreach materials outline ideas for new bus rapid transit (BRT) corridors, stronger express connections to major employment centers, and a redesign of local service to provide more reliable, all-day mobility.
Read more from the City of Phoenix here:
For decades, the West Valley has grown outward primarily around freeways and arterials, with transit often playing catch-up. Now the city is asking whether frequent, legible transit can become part of the growth strategy, rather than an afterthought. If Phoenix follows through on even part of this vision, it could redefine mobility for hundreds of thousands of residents — and offer a model for other Sun Belt metros facing the same pressures.
Access-A-Ride’s Milestone in New York City
In New York, the MTA’s Access-A-Ride paratransit program reached a major milestone: more than one million trips completed in a single month, the highest in the program’s history, while maintaining on-time performance above 95 percent.
Details are in the agency’s recent coverage here:
Paratransit is notoriously complex to operate at scale. Riders depend on it for essential trips, and small breakdowns in reliability can have outsized effects on their lives. The MTA credits improved dispatch systems, expanded use of accessible taxis, and wider adoption of OMNY contactless fare payment for helping handle higher demand while preserving reliability.
For riders with disabilities, this is about more than metrics — it’s about independence and access to work, appointments, and community life. For other agencies, it’s a case study in how ongoing operational work and technology upgrades can quietly transform an essential service.
San Francisco Muni’s Ridership Rebound
On the West Coast, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) reports that Muni ridership has climbed back to roughly 82 percent of pre-pandemic levels systemwide, with weekends up around 95 percent and some key corridors exceeding their pre-COVID numbers.
You can see coverage of those trends here:
The standout example is the Van Ness bus rapid transit corridor, where center-running lanes, transit signal priority, and other speed-and-reliability improvements have driven ridership to roughly 140 percent of where it was before the pandemic.
The takeaway is straightforward but powerful: when agencies invest in making service faster, more reliable, and more legible, riders respond. A few minutes saved on each trip — and a system that can be trusted to show up — are often more transformative than any marketing campaign.
Putting It All Together
Taken together, these stories point to a common theme: transit’s future is being shaped by the intersection of land use, growth, accessibility, and operations.
• Housing reforms are putting more people closer to good transit.
• Fast-growing regions are trying to design networks that can keep up.
• Accessibility investments are expanding who can actually use the system.
• Operational improvements are quietly bringing riders back where service has improved.
That’s the work of Transportopia in the real world: not just imagining better transit, but doing the steady, unglamorous work that makes it function for more people, more of the time.
If you’d like to hear the audio version of this News & Views segment — along with my full conversation with Jarrett Walker — listen on the podcast page here.