In Boston, the presence of a nearby T stop massively boosts property prices, creates businesses, allows people to live without cars, and so on. Nothing improves an area holistically like mass transit improvements.
Among other things it linked most of the city's major stadiums, creating a relief valve for major event traffic, it linked parking and medical center sites, cutting traffic to and from our congested Medical Center and almost since inception it has carried more people on a daily basis than the combined ridership of our spoke and hub "Park and Ride" system which brings commuters in from the suburbs to downtown.
Development along the Red Line has ramped up and the gentrification that comes from it is obvious along its recent Northern expansion. So just like in Boston bringing rail has a net-postive effect on property values once construction is done.
Considering those ridership numbers are based on paid rides and ours is an honor system with loose enforcement Metro is putting up some decent ridership numbers!
Unfortunately due to Bob Lanier's intentionally blocking such expansion we don't have the desperately needed heavy rail system to cut freeway traffic between Houston's higher density bedroom communities.
And more frustratingly we still have only part of the rail plan implemented due to ongoing efforts to block rail funding. The rail line proposed to link our downtown and Galleria commercial district has been blocked for 10+ years by a single Congressman and some vocal business owners in a 1.5 mile stretch of road. If they had just sucked it up the construction would be done and those same businesses would be benefiting from their increased accessibility.
Houston's near town development has a long history unique to our area - everything from a former Freedman's town that left lots of prime real estate in the hands of people who really preferred not to sell for development to local management districts using tax money to buy property outside their taxation area in order to prevent or slow gentrification. The area recently expanded to by the Northline extension was considered a blue collar area at best and frankly too crime-ridden and dangerous at worst for any redevelopment. That has turned around with the rail - and since Houston's is an at grade rail, we actually lose one-two lanes of the thoroughfare when rail goes in. Yet North Houston which was the site of the Moody Park Riots is now the target of development and gentrification and you can track that against the rail's expansion.