A STUDY OF URBAN RAIL TRANSIT DEVELOPMENT EFFECTS IN BANGKOK METROPOLITAN REGION

Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR), also known as Greater Bangkok is the urban conglomeration of Bangkok, Thailand, consists of a large core so-called Bangkok Metropolitan Area (BMA) and the five vicinities of Nakhon Pathom, Nonthaburi, Pathum Thani, Samut Prakan, and Samut Sakhon. In the early period, most people settled along the Chao Phraya River and the canals. Waterway served as the main mode of transportation for Bangkoknians’ commuting. By the mid-19 th century, the commuting system was changed from water transport to land transport and had emphasized plans of transportation infrastructures such as bridge and road network. There have seen significant urban shifts in land use and travel behaviors. Specifically, this gradually converted Bangkok into a car dependency city and made the city spread outwards. Physically, employment locations are largely concentrated in the inner core. Such urban structure unavoidably generates huge amount of travel demand which are mostly made by long distance trips by private vehicles. The transportation in Bangkok is presently based on road and expressway network. The reason is that travel on private car is far superior to travel on crowded bus running in heavily congested traffic. The present 404 bus routes are still not enough to accommodate the travel demand especially from/to suburban areas. Then, the urban rail transit via the Mass Rapid Transit Master Plan has been introduced to alleviate the traffic issues and mainly serves people between suburban to the central part of Bangkok. According to that plan, the based-rail rapid transit development, in particular urban rail transit, has been promoted as a top priority project in 20 years plan. That urban rail transit brings large impacts to the relative attractiveness of the locations near the urban rail transit networks is well recognized in many developed countries, however, in a city being young in urban rail transit experience like the BMR is not gaining more attention. This research attempts to understand the effects of urban rail transit network expansions on land development in Bangkok Metropolitan Region, Thailand in viewpoints of land use change, land value uplift and residential location decision. The benefits due to rail transit development also impact on the areas which are announced in the top priority project in 20 years plan extension. For the study of land use change due to the urban rail transit development, the conversions of land within 5 kilometer along the existing and under construction urban rail transit corridors between 2004 and 2010 were intended to investigate. Satellite images were used to track the conversions of land parcel at the same address but different years. To identify the conversions, each land parcel was aggregated into four categories: undeveloped land (agricultural land or no buildings), residential land (detached house, semi-detached house, attached house, and row house), high-rise residential land (condominium and apartment) and non-residential land (commercial and industrial). Specifically, undeveloped land category was selected as an initial state of land use in the year 2004. A traditional discrete choice model, namely multinomial logit model, was applied to investigate whether urban rail transit investment alter the urban form. Next, examining of the extent of the influence of urban rail transit investments in the context of land price was captured. Land price data obtained from the Treasury Department, Thailand, which was published in the year 2008, was employed to capture the capitalization effects. A global regression framework was applied to determine the premium value of land based on its attributes. The global regression assumes that relationship is constant over space. However, the relationship often might vary across space because the attributes are not the same in different locations. Therefore, the variations of the influences on the land value were revealed by classifying data into different groups of land use such as residential and non-residential and incorporating spatial heterogeneity. The spatial statistical test was based on the geographically weighted regression model (GWR) that allows estimating a model at each observation point. Understanding those impacts is necessary in order to allow the public agencies to tax the direct beneficiaries of their investments in the affected districts in advance so as to finance infrastructure projects. Then, whether the effects of urban rail transit development associated with residential location decision was presented. In fact, there are many factors might contribute to differences in household residential location decision. However, many previous literatures indicated that transportation accessibility plays the important role in residential decision making. As known, the urban rail transit development provides a high level of access to other activities for households such as access to work, shopping, etc. The hypothesis that is, improving in transportation accessibility was reflected as one of the dominant factors for the residential location decision. Traditional discrete choice model, namely, multinomial logit (ML) and nested logit (NL) model together with an application of discrete choice model for a ranking of alternatives, i.e., rank-ordered logit (ROL) and ranked-ordered nested logit (RONL) model were applied. The mainly data used for this examining was obtained from a stated preference survey in Bangkok Metropolitan Region, Thailand incorporating with other variables such as local transportation accessibility, work and non-work accessibility, house affordability, neighborhood amenity and land attribute together with household characteristics. The results from the models vary with socioeconomic and locational attributes such as local transportation accessibility, work and non-work accessibility, neighborhood amenity and land attribute confirm that the urban rail transit development influences on the land development in terms of land use change, land value and residential location choice. The urban rail transit development resulted in higher land price and an invisible increase of land development among residential, highrise residential and non-residential property as well as a higher agglomeration of population and household near the urban rail transit corridors. For instance, BTS Skytrain and MRT Blue Line network connected to the central business district (CBD) of Bangkok Metropolitan Region generated high-rise residential developments (e.g. luxury condominium and apartment) with higher values near their stations, while residential development was greatly found that in the area along the Airport Rail Link corridor with the lower value than those development in adjacent area of BTS Skytrain and MRT Blue Line corridor. Further, those urban rail transit lines induce the conversion urban from to nonresidential properties (e.g. office building, shop store, etc.) with higher bid-rent, but this effect was not found within 3 kilometer of the Airport Rail Link. Moreover, the estimated premium for urban rail transit accessibility is approximately 15 percent for residential land and non-residential land price along the BTS Skytrain as well as 10 percent for residential land and non-residential land price along the MRT Blue Line. However, the capitalization effects of proximity to Airport Rail Link stations found that the beneficial effects will worth less than 4 percent to residential land parcels and 2.5 percent to non-residential land parcels along the Airport Rail Link corridor. Besides, the residential location choice model indicated that the effect of the accessibility to BTS Skytrain stations has a remarkably high influence on residential location decisions compared with the effects of accessibility to MRT Purple Line and MRT Blue Line stations, i.e., households prefer living near the BTS Skytrain stations, followed by MRT Purple Line and MRT Blue Line stations but less likely to live near the Airport Rail Link and SRT Red Line corridor. Besides, among urban rail transit users, they prefer to live close to the stations of BTS Skytrain, followed by the areas near the stations of MRT Blue Line due to the fact that areas can access the station easily with various feeder modes. When controlling for neighborhood attributes, low income households are more likely to live at locations which are close to the station of MRT Blue Line but high income households prefer to live close to the station of BTS Skytrain as middle income households. Notably, low income households are less likely to reside along the adjacent area of the SRT Red Line. In accordance with the explanations, it can be notable that land development is a sequential process as a result of urban rail transit development. After BTS Skytrain and MRT Blue Line started their service, land along the corridors tended to be converted to residential uses uses where households were more likely to reside that is the reason for the land value uplift due to the extremely competition among the sites. On the other hand, households are less likely to prefer living in this zone along the Airport Rail Link corridor, however, the results also found in the same direction but lower value than BTS Skytrain and MRT Blue Line. This is considered as benefit brought by the urban rail transit development. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First of all, I would like to convey my profound appreciation and deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Dai Nakagawa for his valuable advice, continuous supervision throughout my study. I also would like to thank his support and give me opportunities to have great experiences in study and living in Japan. I sincerely thank to my sub-supervisor, Associate Prof. Ryoji Matsunaka, for his help, patience and his insightful suggestion. And I also sincerely thank to Assistant Prof. Tetsuharu Oba, for his support and important advices. Without their guidance and persistent hel