According to Curbed Boston, the land surrounding Boston-area T and commuter-rail stations could support an estimated 253,000 new housing units, which could help with the city's housing shortage and notorious traffic. The data comes from the Massachusetts Housing Partnership’s Center for Housing Data. According to the group's recent report, overall density near the stations average about 6.5 homes per gross acre. The group recommends boosting the number to ten.
In fact, the partnership says the 10-homes-per-acre density could be achieved not through large new apartment buildings but through a mix of single-, two-, and three-family homes.
“While this math is incredibly simple and ignores some important neighborhood factors, it does show the potential that reimagining these high-access neighborhoods could have in terms of better supporting transit while simultaneously making a huge dent in our chronic housing supply problem,” the Center for Housing Data said in a summary of the report (which includes a handy tool for analyzing the density around the 261 stations).
As the center noted, though, there are myriad factors affecting the potential for such transit-oriented development. Each city and town in the Boston region has its own zoning regs and hurdles re: housing—note what’s been going on in Newton as far as building along the Green Line.
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