krtaylor wrote:Also, much of the original subway system was built on spec. I've seen photos of the subway being built off into empty fields in Upper Manhattan, using a "field of dreams" approach. The company purchased all the land around the new stations, so as to sell it for much higher prices once the line was running to offset the costs. This worked beautifully. It's been done in many places, including Tokyo; I don't know why it isn't done today.
I'm assuming that "spec." means speculation, rather than specification, just to clarify.
What you describe is being done, but in a slightly different manner. The land is not necessarily being owned and sold by the railroad company - most passenger trains are owned and operated by governmental entities.
Here in Portland, OR - TriMet owns/operates most of the transit system; the Portland Streetcar being an exception (owned and "operated" by the City of Portland Office of Transportation, but the actual operation has been contracted out to TriMet.) So TriMet itself is not a development agency and does not develop land. BUT - the regional government, Metro, is a planning agency. So Metro goes out, makes the plans for both transit and development, and initiates the process of starting light rail lines, gets the initial federal funding - and then turns over final design to TriMet. But it acquires land for development along the light rail lines. The City of Portland did the same, through its Portland Development Commission, for the Portland Streetcar; or facilitated the purchase by an interested third party, and provided some back-scratching to move projects through an otherwise cluttered and congested Planning Department process.
In the end, both Light Rail and Streetcar was designed partially as mass transit, and partially to increase development. Much of the land in Hillsboro was farm land until just a few years ago, now it is business parks, Intel, and apartment/condo complexes. Orenco Station was never a bustling place since the Oregon Electric Railroad stopped interurban trains there (a one time junction) in the early 1930s, except for the occasional game of golf. The north end of the Streetcar route was nothing but rows of vacant, abandoned railroad warehouses which became make-shift homeless camps; now it's home to $600,000+ (for a studio) condos, art galleries, and expensive restaurants - all post-streetcar.
Without the PDC and Metro, many of the developments in the area would not be built, or the development would be so haphazard that light rail would never make sense. (Of course, Metro is also being blamed in part for the increase in housing prices in Portland because of some of its "decisions" in how housing is built.)