Downtown Salem. (Photo by Jonathan Berk)

THE AVERAGE Boston area driver spends over 130 hours, nearly five full days, sitting in some of the worst traffic in the world. Our congestion costs us millions of hours of economic productivity and time that could be better spent on our health, friends, and families.

At the same time, we suffer from a severe shortage of housing across the region, a number that many place at over 200,000 units today. That’s sent housing costs skyrocketing and the dream of homeownership further out of reach for many. As costs of housing in the inner suburbs have soared, with the median home in Greater Boston now over $900,000, we’ve sprawled ourselves to the furthest reaches of the region in search of more affordable housing. This sprawl pushes workers further away from jobs, and access to reliable public transit, further clogging our highways and area roads.

A major piece of the solution to both of these existential crises is not the latest fancy tech innovation, but a simple concept that we perfected hundreds of years ago in the earliest days of our region: building more homes, of all types, in and around walkable neighborhoods, with a mix of housing and retail, that place people closer to many of their daily needs. It would represent a doubling down on the great walkable places we know and love today in many Massachusetts cities and towns.

Traffic patterns and peak congestion times have evolved dramatically since 2020. While workers in some industries have been given more flexibility to work from home, traffic is still getting worse and peaks at different times of the day and different days of the week as trips are more spread out throughout the day.

A 2022 MassINC poll found that 47 percent of Massachusetts voters said “we need major changes to the way we get around.” A large part of our transportation networks focus on commutes yet, nationwide, commutes to work make up only 28 percent of all trips generated from home. Over 70 percent of trips are for things like errands, social visits, and entertainment, including nearly 50 percent for basic everyday needs like milk, bread, or other essentials.

While much of today’s transportation discussion focuses around “mode shift,” meaning shifting trips from cars to public transit, another often overlooked cause of our congestion is our sprawling land use patterns that require nearly every errand or trip from home to be accomplished by car. By locating people near those daily essentials and other entertainment options like bars, restaurants, and improved public spaces, we could eliminate a large percentage of vehicles on Massachusetts roads.

Since traffic congestion increases exponentially as more cars hit the road, providing more housing closer to things people need and taking even a small percentage of cars off the road every day will have an exponential impact on our often choked local roads and highways.

Beyond just traffic, placing more housing in walkable areas makes our communities more economically, socially and environmentally sustainable places. A built-in customer base for our small businesses encourages more spending locally instead of outside the community.

In a 2022 survey by Main Street America, 75 percent of main street managers across the country indicated that the lack of housing on their walkable main street was a major issue holding back the long term success of their districts. In another recent survey, over 80 percent of small business owners on local main streets also live in their communities, building local wealth while reinvesting those dollars back into their communities.

Beyond economics, a healthy local commercial street with ample and diverse housing options builds community, supports improved social connectivity, and provides new housing options to allow people to scale up or down while entering different phases of their lives within a community.

More than just the need to embrace walkable neighborhoods as a region, there’s an unmet demand for walkable housing in the housing market. Nationwide, 79 percent of respondents in a recent survey from the National Association of Realtors indicated walkability was very or somewhat important when choosing their next place to live. In addition, walkable real estate generates, on average, 12 times more property tax revenue than drivable suburban places, with less cost born by the municipality to extend roads and services to sprawling parts of town.

Despite all of this, resistance continues to attempts at larger rezoning efforts to allow more walkable housing near transit, as we saw recently in Milton and have heard rumblings of in Boston and elsewhere

By and large, this is a continuation of a pattern of resistance to new housing that started in earnest in the 1970s and led to the housing supply crisis we find ourselves in today. Some of the opposition is due to broken processes that have enabled the loudest voices in the room to control, stifle, and often wield outsized veto power over new housing growth.

Overall, there is broad regional support for rezoning efforts. When voters in Eastern Massachusetts were asked in a 2022 MassINC poll about the state’s efforts to rezone for more housing near transit, 37 percent said they want to “keep the policy in place,” with 31 percent saying we should “go further and require more housing near MBTA stations.” Only 12 percent said we should repeal the law.

In Milton’s recent election on a zoning plan to comply with the MBTA Communities law, in denser, more walkable neighborhoods of the town’s precincts 1, 2, 4a, and 10, there was overwhelming support for the rezoning, which would have directly impacted those neighborhoods, with 60 to 70 percent voting “Yes.” In the more sprawling, larger lot sections of town, and East Milton, precincts 6, 7, 8, and 9 saw the bulk of the “No” vote, with those precincts opposing the new zoning at a rate of 60 to 80 percent.

It’s more important than ever to ensure more voices are heard in the housing conversation and show support for more walkable housing in your community. Reach out to your local elected officials to find ways you can get more involved in this work in your community. Encourage and support initiatives aimed at housing growth in the more walkable areas of your community by breaking down barriers like overburdensome zoning and unpredictable, often lengthy, entitlements processes. In addition, there are a number of large-scale and ongoing initiatives statewide aimed at supporting more walkable infill housing production that you can get involved with today.

In Boston, the Wu administration and Boston Planning and Development Agency have launched a planning process called “Squares + Streets,” which, according to the BPDA, is “a planning and zoning initiative focused on adding, supporting, and improving housing, public space, small businesses, and arts and culture in transit-accessible neighborhood centers and along main streets.” The first two districts to go through this process will be Cleary Square in Hyde Park and Roslindale Square.

Beyond Milton, 176 other Massachusetts communities either served by or adjacent to a community that is served by the MBTA must zone for as-of-right multi-family housing near their transit stations. Communities were given a set of parameters within which they have to operate, dictating how and where to locate these zones.

Many communities are deep in debate now about where exactly to locate those. As discussions ramp up in many of those communities this year, make sure you’re getting involved and push to ensure the benefits of walkability are incorporated in discussions at the local level.

On the Cape and the Islands, The Cape Cod Commission has produced a “Model Mixed-Use Bylaw” aimed at helping communities implement zoning that enables more housing production in walkable places. With limited land to build on the Cape and a growing, acute housing crisis on the Cape and Islands, walkable, infill housing strategies are the most sustainable way for the Cape to provide the housing it needs while also preserving its vital natural resources and limiting traffic impacts on local roadways.

If you’re on Cape Cod, reach out to your local planning departments to find out how you can support adopting these model bylaws on the municipal level.

Our housing and congestion issues are enormous, they’re negatively impacting people in Massachusetts today, and they are existential to the future of the Commonwealth that we all love. On the bright side, they aren’t without solutions.

We know fixing the MBTA will require a large, and necessary, public investment, but changes to our land use patterns are equally as necessary and have the potential to bring about major positive changes today with minimal public investment. We have to think bigger and be bolder when it comes to the solutions to our region’s greatest challenges. These changes will require all of us to take an open mind to rethinking the last 60 years of unsustainable sprawl and embrace more walkable, infill housing development (again!).

Jonathan Berk is the founder of Re:Main, a newly launched organization working with public and private sector partners to enhance our walkable neighborhoods through creative public space activations, innovative small business programs, and support for the production of more walkable housing. He also serves as a member of the board of the pro-housing group Abundant Housing Massachusetts.