This story was reported and written by Andy Peters, with design by Jelena Schulz.
Forget everything you know about dreary bus stops, dank subway stations and those confusing signs about when and where to board the correct train or bus.
Government agencies in the United States and Canada are spending big bucks to hire award-winning architects to design transit stations with details such as soaring roofs or canopies and glass walls that wrap around stations. The end game is to boost ridership and transit-oriented development.
Take the Federal Way station in the Seattle area. When local transit agency Sound Transit announced it wanted to hire a developer for vacant lots near the design-forward station, two local professionals took notice.
Jeremy Wilkening, vice president of development at Blue Ridge Cascade, and Amanda Santo, chief operations officer at Multi-Service Center, quickly partnered and applied for the development rights. The light rail station opened in December 2025, and the partners won the contract shortly after. They're now finalizing financing and obtaining permits for a 233-unit residential project.
“We wanted to make this more dense and more walkable and not a car-dependent community,” Wilkening told CoStar News.
The concept of transit-oriented development isn’t new. Public transit agencies have long sought ways to make better use of underutilized assets, such as empty parking lots. What’s new is that transit agencies and architects are prioritizing station design, said Jose Gonzalez, an architect and principal at Francl Architecture in Vancouver, British Columbia.
“When stations become destinations by themselves rather than just infrastructure, nearby investment normally accelerates,” Gonzalez told CoStar News. “In many successful cities, the station becomes the front door to a neighborhood, driving up real estate value directly.”
For many architects who have recently designed stations, a top priority has been how to make them as inclusive as possible. Everyone in the neighborhood, from all walks of life, should be able to access transit and enjoy the experience, said Jeff Doble, an architect and principal in the transportation practice at Perkins & Will.
"Stations can become the heart of our communities and therefore some of our most important and cherished pieces of civic architecture," Doble told CoStar News.
Instead of looking to build as quickly — and as cheaply — as possible, developers and architects are investing more time and money into the design of transit stations, rather than treating it as an afterthought. That may require more dollars up front at a time when many states are cutting budgets, making it more difficult for transit agencies to secure funding. But if better station design draws more riders, it can attract private investors who might develop nearby commercial properties, according to architects who have designed stations.
“When transit is designed as a place, not just infrastructure, people choose it and cities build around it,” Ana-Francisca de la Mora, an architect and principal at Arcadis in Toronto, told CoStar News. De la Mora has designed stations for the Toronto Transit Commission, the city's primary public transport agency.
There are two points of focus when designing new stations, according to architects specializing in transportation.
One is users' access and movement around a station, with trained urban planners emphasizing clear boundaries between transit modes, wayfinding signage and access for riders with physical disabilities.
The other is the visual appearance of stations, with architects from award-winning firms amping up flashy design flourishes like white spires forming a canopy over boarding platforms, glass structures that glow at night, and curving, oblong-shaped buildings.
Placemaking on a smaller scale
Cities in the U.S. and Canada that are emphasizing station design include Seattle, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Ottawa. All are in the midst of major expansions of transit networks. It’s also happening piecemeal in places like Chicago, Philadelphia and Atlanta, where single stations are being renovated.
These aren’t the grand railroad stations of American and European history, palaces like Grand Central Terminal in New York or St. Pancras in London. The new trend applies mostly to smaller stations along light rail, regional rail and subway lines.
Resembling a spaceship, the Vaughan Metropolitan Centre station in suburban Toronto “introduces natural light deep into the underground concourse through a sweeping domed ceiling that integrates public artwork by Paul Raff Studio,” according to Grimshaw, a British firm that designed the structure.
“Its mirrors integrate with the canopy structure to create a three-dimensional collage that reflects skylights and the dynamic activity of the station environment,” Grimshaw said.
Once the station’s design was unveiled, it quickly attracted adjacent commercial development. The 15-story KPMG Tower is connected to the Vaughan station by both an outdoor plaza and an underground tunnel.
Also in the Toronto area, the boomerang-shaped York University station has an “aerofoil roof canopy,” according to the lead design architect, Foster & Partners. “The underside of the canopy is highly polished metal, reflecting the movement of people beneath. The double-height ticked hall is glazed on every side and filled with natural light. Its exposed roof structure [with diagonally installed beams] is supported by V-shaped columns, which maximize the open area.”
Other stations are less flashy but have still caught the attention of the design cognoscenti. The main entrance building at the Damen station in Chicago, designed by Perkins & Will, has ground-to-roof glass walls and a wood interior ceiling. An exposed concrete tower is set at a 90-degree angle to a pedestrian bridge made from bright green metal beams.
The Damen station won an AIA Architecture Award from the American Institute of Architects and an Honor Award for small projects from the AIA Chicago chapter last year.
Factors like ease of use and safety features, such as closing roads to automobile traffic for exclusive pedestrian use, are equally important to the visual design when it comes to attracting developers, said Emad Miran, an architect at NORR who wasn’t involved in the Damen station project.
“The core of modern transit station design are principles that prioritize accessibility — ensuring continuous, unobstructed paths from drop-off to platform — alongside safety through clear visibility,” Miran told CoStar News.
Funding remains obstacle
Current economic conditions are not always conducive to finding extra dollars in federal, state or provincial budgets, said Martine Combal, senior vice president of public institutions at JLL. President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year includes a US$16.3 billion cut for public transit, a 23% drop from the current budget.
But regional transit agencies that want to emphasize station design have identified ways around fiscal constraints.
“They’re emphasizing the customer experience,” Combal told CoStar News. “It’s things like signage, real-time info on train and bus arrival times, a lot of improvements that don’t take a huge amount of design costs.”
Design and construction costs for transit stations typically range between US$50 million and US$100 million, according to several architects who spoke with CoStar News. However, the cost can rise dramatically based on geography, whether certain amenities like restrooms are included, and how financing is structured, according to a study by New York University’s Marron Institute of Urban Management.
“They want the station to be as functional and as user-friendly as possible, because that is going to facilitate consistent lease up.—
Martine Combal
Expenses are a longstanding issue for architects, Perkins & Will's Doble said.
“Great architecture works with tight budgets all the time,” said Doble. “We always look to strategies such as modularity, prefabrication, maximizing economies of scale, to deliver elegant and efficient designs.”
Some commercial developers are content if a station doesn’t have architectural bells and whistles, as long as they’re easily accessible, Combal added.
“They want the station to be as functional and as user-friendly as possible, because that is going to facilitate consistent lease up, especially on the multifamily side," Combal said.
In other cases, the transit agencies are throwing caution to the wind in their pursuit of “gold-plated stations,” Joe Schwieterman, director of the Sustainable Urban Development Program at DePaul University, told CoStar News, not referring specifically to stations with gold plating.
The Chicago Transit Authority, for example, is spending about US$440 million to renovate the State/Lake station on the Chicago “L” line. Lead architect Skidmore, Owings & Merrill crafted a design that features a glass-and-ceramic canopy to cover the station.
Schwieterman supports “attractive and well-designed stations [because] they give property buyers assurance that the project is going to be successful and will be around for generations.”
But with some stations like State/Lake in Chicago, “Do they really need to be this costly and elaborate?” Schwieterman asked.
A Chicago Transit Authority spokesperson declined CoStar News' request for comment.
Parisian approach
Nothing involving station design in the U.S. or Canada comes anywhere close to Paris.
The French capital city is spending about US$40 billion on Grand Paris Express, the largest public transportation project in European history, according to Société des Grands Projets, one of the agencies leading the program. Paris is building 120 miles of new rail tracks with 68 new stations. World-renowned architects like Kengo Kuma, Bjarke Ingels and Dominique Perrault have been retained to design the new stations.
New stations in the U.S. and Canada are typically far more modest, both in appearance and cost. Architects at Lemay who worked on stations for the Réseau express métropolitain expansion project in Montreal used templates, or a design framework that can be used repeatedly, to help keep a lid on costs. Even with a template, the stations are attractive and have glass walls to make them appear to glow at night.
Developers have taken note. Groupe Devimco last year opened the 246-unit Lumeo Sud apartments about a 9-minute walk from the Station Du Quartier in Brossard, just outside Montreal. The same developer opened the nearby 311-unit Oria Condominiums in 2024.
“That area has been highly active in terms of development,” Audrey Girard, an urban planner at Lemay, told CoStar News. “The [Groupe Devimco] residential buildings are fully integrated into the transit station.”
Developers also remain interested in potential projects near older stations that lack award-winning architecture. Hackensack Meridian Health opened a US$200 million healthcare clinic in Iselin, New Jersey, next to the Metropark station for NJ Transit and Amtrak trains last month. The healthcare provider described it as the first health and wellness center in the U.S. next to a major travel station. Metropark opened in 1971 and was renovated in 2009.
By and large, old and decrepit stations aren’t going to cut it when it comes to luring commercial development, Schwieterman said. The new wave of station design needs to be inclusive of all types of users, provide clear signage to help riders navigate to the correct platform, and, when possible, feature exterior and interior designs that can inspire pride among community members, he said.
“Travelers dread finding themselves in a concrete room that makes transit feel like a mode of last resort,” Schwieterman said. “Architectural sizzle can improve a transit system’s image in the mind of the public.”