A new tool facilitates TOD planning, zoning and decision-making.
Transit projects can inform corporate real estate strategy as much as they can transform a community of riders. In 2024, global design and architecture firm Gensler announced the Gensler Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Opportunity Index, a tool that evaluates the development potential of parcels of land located near transit stations and facilities.
The index has been applied to projects from the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) and the transit systems managed by the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), with different criteria weighed depending on how the agency prioritizes quality of life, housing stock, corporate development friendliness and ease of connection to broader regional transportation and land use planning efforts.
I spoke about the index with Jaymes Dunsmore, senior associate and mobility & transportation lead at Gensler, and also David Zaidain, chief of transit-oriented development at MDOT, about what makes TOD projects successful for the community and businesses surrounding those projects.
Assessing Potential for Transit Projects
The Gensler Opportunity TOD Index consists of five components — transit connectivity & service, walkability, bikeability, development feasibility and community health & wellbeing.
“We have worked with a number of public sector clients,” Dunsmore says. “Each agency is a little bit different in what their priorities are. For MDOT, they were really looking at wanting to find things that were feasible. Development feasibility was one of their top criteria.”
The index, which has been in development for the better part of a decade and formalized for use in the past two years, also assesses connectivity and service by looking at the number of rail and bus lines serving a location and the frequency of service. A location with more frequent service is likely going to support a higher level of development than a station with a half-hour service frequency on a commuter line.
“For development feasibility, we’re looking at things like parcel size,” Dunsmore says. “So, the ideal parcel size varies, but somewhere around two acres is great. Any size smaller than that, you can still do development, but you just have more constraints. We look at the existing developments and compare that to the zoned capacity. So, a site that has been fully built out doesn’t have a lot of opportunity for redevelopment compared to a site that’s either vacant or just a parking lot or one retail building in a large parking lot. You might only be using 25% of the capacity or less.”
Dunsmore says the tool is also used to assess quality of experience for transit users. For example, what amenities are at the transit station? Are there ticketing and shade structures? Restrooms or indoor facilities? For walkability, walking distance from neighboring parcels to the station site is examined in addition to the presence of sidewalks, pedestrian lighting and shade along routes where direct constant sun might be less than ideal (i.e., southern California).
Similarly, biking distance and quality of experience are also key factors considered for bikeability, Dunsmore notes. The index considers bicycle infrastructure such as dedicated bike lanes that make a route more pleasant and likely to be used by cyclists. Along those lines, Dunsmore notes that equity and quality of life were high priorities when working with SANDAG.
“We looked at ways to incorporate that into the index — things like community health and well-being,” Dunsmore says. “For community health and well-being, we’re looking at things like open space, amenities — things like schools, parks, health clinics. Are there things in the community surrounding the station that support people living there? And if not, that doesn’t mean you can’t have development, but it helps you to indicate [that] these are things we might want to add to this community to help facilitate development.
“One of the challenges is that land use is often planned at a local level,” Dunsmore explains. “So there can be a mismatch where you have a state agency like MDOT that’s doing the rail commuter rail corridor or a regional agency like SANDAG that’s planning transit service. But then it’s the local cities or counties sometimes that are in charge of what is zoned and what development can get built at that station. So, you can have a mismatch where the agency is like, ‘OK, we’re going to put a station here, but it’s currently zoned for industrial uses and it’s not very transportive.’ So that’s one thing that these types of planning projects can help identify is [to] kind of bridge that gap between these agencies. It’s really important because having the right development around transit stations is really critical to the success of that transit.”
The Gensler TOD Opportunity Index can be used as a diagnostic tool to help determine what changes in zoning can be made to allow for a higher level of density or mobility improvements like adding pedestrian bridges to connect a previously inaccessible area. Essentially, it facilitates the process by which developers and agencies can understand what the planned capacity of a station could potentially be.
“When you think about a built TOD project and whether or not it’s successful, it’s definitely ridership,” Dunsmore says. “But I think it’s about creating a high-quality place where you would want to live. That is the end goal here — places that are nice communities to live in — where you have lots of amenities that you can walk to or bike to easily. A grocery store, school, park — all of those things.”
Building a Transit-Oriented Community
I spoke with David Zaidain, chief of transit-oriented development at the Maryland Department of Transportation, about the aspects of TOD that MDOT considers when planning and building projects.
“We want to have full multimodal connectivity to our TOD sites,” Zaidain says. “That’s the whole crux of TOD being successful — not only can people within the new development access the transit, but people around the new development need to be able to access the transit. So we prioritize multimodal connectivity — bike, pedestrian, accessibility throughout all of our TOD projects. We coordinate not only with the development teams that we work with, but also with local and state agencies to make sure that those aspects are prioritized.”
Zaidain noted that return on investment in TOD is also important, as are housing options for commuters and residents.
“We want to look at economic development, so many of our projects are development of public land for TOD,” says Zaidain. “That’s kind of a common tool that most transit and transportation agencies use to develop TOD. We are wanting to make sure that the development is generating revenue for the local jurisdiction and the state so that we can fund services.
Gensler’s Jaymes Dunsmore says equity and quality of life were high priorities when working with the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) on projects such as the San Ysidro Mobility Hub.
Rendering courtesy of Gensler and SANDAG
“We do see housing as a priority, but that doesn’t limit us from looking at business development,” he says. “How do we attract good anchors? Because that can be great TOD generation as well. So, we work with the Department of Commerce in doing that. We also think it’s important that we consider institutional locational decisions. There are some great universities within our state — University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins. And we do reach out to them and work with them as they may look to expand. We want them to expand into transit-accessible sites.”
Notable TOD projects in Maryland include a recent mixed-use build-out in New Carrolton on the Purple Line, a light rail addition for MDOT that will connect Washington Metro lines, Amtrak and the MARC commuter rail servicing Washington-Baltimore. The Purple Line is expected to be complete in 2027. The Owings Mills station in Baltimore County, located at the terminus of the Baltimore Metro transit system, has been undergoing development for the last 15 years. The Metro Centre at Owings Mills is a $220 million TOD project that already includes retail, housing, office space and a conference center and hotel. The area also has a public library and community college, the CCBC Owings Mills Extension Center — all excellent amenities for any company or resident looking for transportation options that will take them anywhere in the state and outward into the greater surrounding region.
MDOT also works closely with several entities to ensure that TOD can be integrated with broader regional transportation and land-use planning. As a state agency, MDOT does not have control over local land use and has to coordinate closely with local jurisdictions to make sure they are incorporating TOD into their comprehensive plans and ensuring they are considering TOD opportunities when zoning changes happen, Zaidain explains.
“It’s really a partnership between the state, particularly MDOT, and our partner agencies like DHCD [Department of Housing and Community Development], partnering with our local jurisdictions and looking at opportunities and making sure that we understand where we should be planning and zoning for TOD within those communities,” he says.
The connection between transit development and economic success for businesses is well established. Maryland Governor Wes Moore has announced several transit-focused developments, including a new community-centered project at Bowie State on the MARC line. The project, located on 4.6 acres west of the Bowie State Marc station, will redevelop both state-owned and private land and has the potential to support 670 construction jobs, create more than 400 housing units and generate $108 million in state and tax revenue, according to an August 2025 press release from the governor’s office.
“The [2024 Maryland State Plan] ties TOD to the greater economic success of the state,” Zaidain says about the state’s approach for upcoming transit projects. “We have a lot of opportunity to develop land for transit and development that not only increases ridership, but increases economic development, and then increases the overall economic health of the state.”
