The Main Line has bet on walkable, transit-oriented development. What happens if the train stops running?

On a recent weekday morning in Narberth, young parents nursed babies outside of coffee shops and local stores swung open their doors for customers. The 4,400-resident borough’s downtown corridor was quiet and charming — a trademark of the Main Line that has drawn suburban dwellers and visitors for decades.

In Narberth and its neighboring Main Line communities, stakeholders in recent years have pushed to embrace transit-oriented development, a model that encourages building retail, restaurants, offices, residential buildings, and parks in a walkable environment, close to public transit. In Narberth and Lower Merion, this has meant proximity to SEPTA’s Paoli/Thorndale Line and the four bus lines — the 44, 52, 103, and 106 — that run through the area.

Such revitalization efforts have helped bring multifamily housing and new businesses to Ardmore. In Narberth, the planning commission last month heard input on various transit-oriented development possibilities. In Malvern, also along the Paoli/Thorndale line, mixed-use development has brought in a “mini renaissance.”

Advocates say transit-oriented development has brought diversity, density, and economic vibrancy to formerly exclusive and sleepy downtown corners.

Yet potential cuts to SEPTA would mean the elimination of the Paoli/Thorndale Line, which has stops in many Main Line towns, and of all four bus routes that service Lower Merion and Narberth. With key train and bus routes on the chopping block, questions loom over the future of development in communities that have bet on building around transit.

Chris Leswing, director of building and planning for Lower Merion, said transit-oriented development serves “multiple goals.”

For suburban communities, it means walkable access to art, dining, and shopping without having to travel into Philadelphia. For city dwellers, it offers an easy escape to the Main Line’s quaint towns, where they can shop, dine, and spend money. Transit-oriented development gets people out of their cars and onto public transit. And, in the case of Narberth and Lower Merion, it creates bikeable and walkable commercial centers for residents.

In fact, Leswing said being able to walk or bike to get groceries, go out to dinner, visit the library or commute to the train is “becoming a premium [feature] on the Main Line.”

“It’s such a great product,” he said. “Who doesn’t want that?”

The term transit-oriented development has been embraced by state and local officials, including the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. A model ordinance proposed by Montgomery County outlines different types of these communities, from neighborhood village centers like Haverford and Wynnewood to town centers like Narberth and Bryn Mawr.

» READ MORE: Close the Paoli/Thorndale line? Many say SEPTA is using the threat as leverage.

Scott France, the executive director of Montgomery County’s Planning Commission, said, “Transit-oriented development … isn’t necessarily reinventing anything. It’s taking advantage of those elements that make a place higher quality, livable, walkable. You can do more than one thing. You don’t just live, you can work, and vice versa.”

Due in part to transit-oriented development efforts, France said, “Ardmore is booming.”

Ardmore in recent years has experienced a downtown revitalization, one marked by developments like Cricket Flats and Shops, a 77-unit rental and retail complex, and buzzy new restaurants.

Carrie Kohs, president of the Ardmore Initiative board of directors, said the Ardmore of 10 to 15 years ago was “a very different place to live,” describing vacant storefronts and rundown buildings.

“The catalyst for the revitalization here was transit-oriented, mixed-use development,” she said.

» READ MORE: Memo from Montco: Deep SEPTA cuts would make the county less livable and prosperous

From 2015 to 2019, SEPTA contributed $268 million in direct and spillover economic impact to Montgomery County, according to Econsult Solutions, an economic and public policy consulting firm.

The COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally altered suburban Philadelphia’s relationship with SEPTA, as ridership dropped and many office workers who, for decades, had commuted into Center City, were given the option of remote work.

Before the pandemic, the Paoli/Thorndale Line reported nearly 6.2 million annual riders with over $28 million in passenger revenue. In 2020, ridership collapsed, and it’s been slowly rebounding since. In 2024, the train line reported 2.9 million annual riders bringing in an annual revenue of $13 million.

Transit-oriented development proposals are not unanimously popular.

Developers of One Ardmore, a 110-unit apartment complex located on Cricket Avenue, faced an 11-year battle with local residents, including litigation before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, before they could open the building’s doors.

At a Narberth planning commission meeting on May 5, public comment on transit-oriented development possibilities in the borough stretched for nearly two hours.

Some residents feared that adding multifamily developments to Narberth would hurt their property values and change the town’s character. Others questioned whether a few new apartments would really diversify Narberth’s housing supply.

“If we’re packing people in, are we lowering our housing values?” Carolmarie Scanlon, a Narberth resident, asked.

France, of Montgomery County’s planning commission, said the new apartment complexes being built along the Paoli/Thorndale Line are not a magic bullet. While they’ve diversified the housing supply of the Main Line, they have not necessarily increased affordability.

A one-bedroom apartment available for rent in Ardmore’s Cricket Flats is currently on the market for $2,960 per month. In April, the typical market-rate rent in Montgomery County was $2,058 per month, according to the Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI).

Yet, France said, “That kind of market-driven turnover is how places revitalize, how they avoid becoming what we see all too often in a lot of places, which is decline and postindustrial change.”

Residents walk to the train station. They might stop somewhere to eat or buy a gift.

“That kind of activity, it gets taken for granted, but when you lose it, it really, really has an effect,” France said.

At Narberth’s planning meeting, drawn-out debates over the merits of transit-oriented development were tempered by a looming reality — without the trains or buses that currently run through the Main Line, such questions could become obsolete.

Deborah Lonsdorf, a local real estate agent, said at the meeting that adding an extra story onto apartment buildings is not going to “save SEPTA” or Narberth’s downtown.

“I don’t think we should make any decisions about building heights or anything, building higher around the train station, until we find out [what’s going to happen with SEPTA],” Lonsdorf said.

» READ MORE: Is Ardmore the Fishtown of the Main Line?

Leswing, of the Lower Merion Building and Planning Department, made clear that SEPTA cuts would not mean “the end of the world.”

Demand for apartments in Lower Merion remains high, and Leswing doesn’t anticipate it will drop off dramatically if cuts to SEPTA materialize. Many of the apartments were designed with limited parking, which could create issues if the need for cars rises, yet it wouldn’t be insurmountable.

“There’s so many factors,” Leswing said, “It’s not a black and white sound bite.”

Others struck a more dire tone.

“It’s not just the people sitting on the train that are going to suffer from the loss of the train,” France said, referencing the increased road congestion that is projected to happen with SEPTA’s proposed service cuts.

On the Main Line, residents who bought into transit-oriented communities may be left with a different reality than the one they signed up for.

“A lot of people moved there because that was part of the equation. I can get to my job here, and I don’t have to do it in my car. I can go into the city, and I can see a show,” France said. “That’s a big, big thing, and we take it for granted, unfortunately.”

Correction: This story originally incorrectly stated the state of two ordinances around transit-oriented development in Narberth.