Exploring the synergistic economic benefit of enhancing neighbourhood bikeability and public transit accessibility based on real estate sale transactions

Planners and policy makers are increasingly promoting biking and public transit as viable means of transportation. The integration of bicycling and transit has been acknowledged as a strategy to increase the mode share of bicycling and the efficiency of public transit by solving the first- and last-mile problem. However, the economic outcomes of jointly promoting neighbourhood bikeability and transit accessibility are still poorly understood. This study aims to assess the property value impact of neighbourhood bikeability, transit accessibility, and their synergistic effect by analysing the single-family and condominium property sale transactions during 2010-2012 in Austin, Texas, USA. Our Cliff-Ord spatial hedonic modelling approach, which is also known as the general spatial model (or SAC), controls for the spatial dependent effects in the sale price and the error terms simultaneously. In order to quantify neighbourhood bikeability and transit accessibility, we use Bike Score and Transit Score as publicly available indices. We have assessed how residents' willingness to pay (WTP) for bikeability and transit accessibility depend on various socio-demographic and built-environment factors, and whether the WTP is influenced by the bicycle-transit synergy. The results from this research show that jointly enhancing bikeability and transit accessibility can generate positive synergistic effects on property values. The effects would behoove policy makers to pursue the coordination of bicycle master plans with regional transit plans and to consider strategies of spatially-joint bicycle and transit investment.