Assessment of the real estate benefits due to accessibility gains brought by a transport project: the impacts of a light rail infrastructure improvement in the Hauts-de-Seine department

摘要

This paper estimates the real estate benefits due to accessibility gains brought by a light railinfrastructure (the T2 tramway, in the Hauts-de-Seine). According to Urban Economics, the accessibilityimprovements resulting from a transport project will influence the residential location choices ofhouseholds, and eventually the land rents at equilibrium will include the valuation of accessibility gainsmade by these households.Apart from accessibility, housing choice also depends on other characteristics: internal characteristicsand external (environmental) characteristics. To take into account all these determinants, we haveestimated a hedonic price function of residential properties econometrically.The data used are sales of residential dwellings in the Hauts-de-Seine department, population censusand other sources, from 1993 to 2004, to take into account anticipation and learning effects.The hedonic price function obtained allows us to measure implicit or “hedonic” prices of dwellingswith a given group of characteristics, and isolates the pure effect of each characteristic on the price of adwelling.The results show that the T2 tramway accessibility improvements are capitalized into the housingprices. To measure this capitalization into real estate, we calculate the prices of dwellings with andwithout these accessibility gains. For the whole department, we estimate a capitalization around 3%.