The Impact of Public Transport Infrastructure on Residential Land Value: Using Spatial Analysis to Uncover Policy-Relevant Processes

This chapter reports the findings of a recent study, which aims to quantify the land value benefits of public transport infrastructure. The empirical investigation focuses on central Cardiff, Wales, where data comprising approximately 9000 property sale records were collected in the period 2000–2009. Through an exploratory and explanatory spatial data analysis, it was found that: (a) there is an underlying bus stop-oriented spatial dependence of the values of residential land, which varies based on the types of housing property (e.g. detached house, semi-detached house, flat) across different areas in Cardiff; (b) after controlling for spatial dependence, there is still a significant positive correlation between bus stops and change in land value. Most importantly, different types of property seem to benefit differently from land value uplift due to bus stop locations. The highest benefits are identified for flats and semi-detached homes followed by terraced and detached homes. The corresponding price gains range from 1.4% for flats to 0.7% for detached homes.