Willingness to Pay for Job Accessibility: Evidences Revealed from Neighborhood Scale Analyses in Buffalo and Seattle Housing Market

It is widely held that land use (activities) and transportation (linkage and movement) are intimately related (Pickrell 1999; Giuliano 1989; Cervero and Landis 1995; Newman and Kenworthy 1996). Many urban and regional policy measures are grounded in the land use/transportation linkage. For example, large-scale transportation investments such as interstate highways in United States (Rephann and Isserman 1994; Chandra and Thompson 2000) and high-speed rail in Japan (Nakamura and Ueda 1989) usually generate multiplier effects in economic activities through space-time convergence brought about by enhanced accessibility (Rietveld and Bruisma 1998). Similarly, real estate development such as business parks, retail and recreational complexes generate new focal points for enhanced traffic flows and contributes to changes in regional characteristics in the long term (Forkenbrock and Foster 1996; Banister and Berechman 2001). Not all of these policy measures achieve their intended outcomes. The manner in which land use interacts with transportation is indeed heavily context-dependent. Multiple-path-dependent factors such as economic conditions and local land use/transportation policy influence the complex inner-workings of the land use/transportation relationship. Therefore, it is necessary to further examine how the land use/transportation relationship is uniquely manifested within the confines of local geographic contexts to ensure that pertinent policy measures are effective. Gradual shifts in public opinion in developed countries support the need for research on the land use/transportation interaction and for integrating land use policy with transportation policy. In recent decades, the legislative landscape (e.g., Clean Air Act, ISTEA, TEA-21) and public sentiment have coalesced in support of an agenda centered on environmental concerns and inequity issues. Open space and agricultural land has been developed to the point that the future water consumption is at risk, while increasing automobile dependence is seen as steering society away from more environmentally sound and equitable practices (Ewing 1997; Kenworthy et al. 1999). Land use and transportation policies evidently have a role to play in changing the course toward sustainability. Within this vein, policy measures such as transit oriented development (TOD) and smart growth have been implemented as a means to reduce automobile dependence and prevent further environmental degradation (Pickrell 1998; Porter 1998). It is important to note that these policy measures are based on the premise that urban form (e.g., density, land use mix, design) influences travel behavior. Not surprisingly, there was a surge of interest in the effects of urban form on travel behavior as documented in Boarnet and Crane (2001). Despite abundance of research, a conundrum surrounding the validity of this kind of research persists; measuring urban form pertinent to problems at hand admittedly remains a challenging task due to its complex dimension and scale factor (Krizek 2003). In contrast to abundant research on the impact of land use on transportation, there is a relative lack of research on the effects of transportation on land use. Transportation improvement increases mobility (i.e., overall travel time is reduced), and as a result affected sites become more accessible. Accessibility influences location decision by firm and household in the long term (i.e., firms want to reduce transportation cost, households want to save on commuting, firms want to be located near a qualified labor pool). That is, a change