[M II A II R II K]

Measurements of Light Rail’s Impact on House Prices Are Uneven

Read More: https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/nor...erty-values-up

In November, Virginia Beach, Virginia, voters rejected — for the second time — a light-rail line that would have connected their city center to the center of Norfolk, 18 miles west. A campaign against the project argued that the cost was too high, that it would not actually alleviate traffic and that it would lead to increases in crime.

The anti-light-rail campaign also cited Norfolk’s light-rail system, the Tide, which went ahead with construction despite Virginia Beach’s first rejection in 1999: The 11-station line, which travels from Norfolk’s center to its eastern boundary, opened with prediction-smashing ridership, but has seen decline ever since. Despite the fact that the Tide remains one of the biggest money losers per ride in the country, operator Hampton Roads Transit has argued that at least light rail has contributed to economic development in downtown, pointing to a figure of $532 million in investment since 2011.

Now a new working paper from the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank asks whether Virginia Beach is missing out on economic benefits by comparing housing prices along the Norfolk Tide and the proposed but unbuilt Virginia Beach extension. To the lead author’s surprise, they found one of the largest negative impacts of light rail on housing prices in the existing literature. “I didn’t think that the light-rail line would be a significant benefit,” says Gary Wagner, lead author, vice president and senior regional officer of the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank. “But I did expect, most of the literature had tended to find a small positive effect.”

Instead, he found that homes within 1,500 meters of a Tide station sold for approximately 8 percent less than similar homes in the Virginia Beach control group. They also found homes close to the Norfolk line are on the market longer, and sell for 2 percent less on average below the asking price. “By a lot of those different metrics, at least in that [metropolitan statistical area], people do not view it as being favorable to be near to the light-rail station. They in fact viewed it as a negative,” says Wagner.

.....