The changing value of proximity to light rail in Sacramento
Creators: name: McLaughlin, Patrick
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2009

description: Sacramento Regional Transit (RT) began providing public transportation services for the City of Sacramento in 1973. Starting with a fleet of 103 busses, RT gradually expanded this service throughout the region for the next decade, eventually serving other municipalities in Sacramento County including Citrus Heights, Elk Grove, Rancho Cordova and Folsom (Transit, 2009). During this period RT planned to expand its service through the creation of a regional light rail system. The "starter line", completed in 1987, connected Interstate 80 and Highway 50 with downtown Sacramento (Transit, 2009). The RT light rail system added additional lines in 1998 and 2003 with extended service along Highway 50 to Mather Field and a new South Line extension to South Sacramento. (Transit, 2009) At this point RT had several other light rail expansions planned that would reach to Folsom in 2006, deeper into South Sacramento and ultimately Sacramento International Airport (Transit, 2009). An important political obstacle to light rail expansion was the perception that this type of transportation infrastructure would negatively affect property values. Many members of the public were fixated on the noise impacts of light rail trains and stations, in addition to potential safety and crime issues associated with increased activity. If RT allowed this negative view of light rail service to permeate throughout the Sacramento Region, it could hamper its efforts to 2 acquire property and expand. In response, RT hired Bay Area Economics (BAE) to analyze the effect light rail service had on property values. In order to quantify the relationship between light rail access and property value within the Sacramento region, BAE developed a hedonic multivariate regression model. This model incorporated many of the variables traditionally thought to affect property sales price, including size, number of bathrooms, neighborhood characteristics, and property type among others. Also included in the model were property proximity to light rail lines and stations, the relationship to which was the key quantitative goal of the study. The purpose of this study was to simply determine whether or not Sacramento's light rail infrastructure had an adverse affect on property values. Ultimately, BAE proved that rail lines and station had little effect on values, paving the way for RT's future expansion plans. While, it was BAE's purpose to simply document the price relationship, the study shed additional insight into the transit-real estate connection in Sacramento. All things being equal, BAE found a small yet statistically significant relationship between a property's proximity to a light rail station and its sale price. This finding is in line with contemporary observations and theories that transportation options are valued in the real estate market. Properties with more options can receive a premium when sold to consumers who are transportation users. The small magnitude of this relationship suggested that light rail service within Sacramento was not as highly valued as it would be in cities where the same method transportation was vital to getting around. Since BAE's 2005 study, Sacramento's social and built urban environment has shifted in a variety of ways that could suggest the potential for an increase in how residents value increased transportation options. This shift would manifest itself in a new hedonic multivariate regression model built with the same variables as the previous study, but with recent home sales data.