Valuing Public Transit: The L-Train Shutdown

Becka Brolinson

No 23-06, FHFA Staff Working Papers from Federal Housing Finance Agency

Abstract: In this paper, I quantify the value of access to public transit in New York using the surprise, hurricane-related announcement of the temporary shutdown of an important piece of transportation infrastructure: the L-train connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan. My approach allows me to measure changes in housing sales prices by using a change in public transit infrastructure that is (a) temporary, and (b) not an outcome of city transit planning, but rather an unexpected consequence of a natural disaster. I find that the L-train's shutdown announcement caused a temporary decrease in sales prices for affected housing units of 6.4 percent. This estimate suggests a monthly capitalization rate of public transit access of around $863 for housing units where the L-train is the nearest subway stop, demonstrating that households in New York City ascribe a high value to transit access. Using these estimates, the benefits of the repair outweigh the costs, with the benefit-to-cost ratio of the repairs ranging from 2.76 to 2.78.

Keywords: transportation; house prices; natural disaster risk (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q54 R31 R38 R4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 62 pages
Date: 2023-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Real Estate Economics, 2024.

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.fhfa.gov/document/wp2306.pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.fhfa.gov/research/papers/wp2306 (text/html)

Related works:
Journal Article: Valuing public transit: The L‐train shutdown (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hfa:wpaper:23-06

DOI: 10.1111/1540-6229.12488

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in FHFA Staff Working Papers from Federal Housing Finance Agency Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by William Doerner ().