Impact of Urban Transit System on Housing Rents: Evidences from India

Public Transport is considered a sustainable mode of mobility, in light of lesser per capita carbon foot print; studies suggest the majority public transit users are from lower or middle income groups (Cardozo et al., 2012, Pagliara and Papa, 2011). In order to strengthen the public transit ridership, the concept of Transit Oriented Development (TOD), featuring high density affordable residential neighborhoods near the transit station, has been coined and implemented world over. It has been observed during literature review that proximity to transit has positive impact on land value, while there is a mixed literature on the association between transit proximity and real estate values, there is scant literature relating transit proximity to real estate rents. As India is striving to achieve affordable housing for all by year 2025 and for achieving this goal providing self owned housing is the biggest challenge. Therefore recently India adopted Rental Housing Policy (RHP) which envisages promoting affordable rental housing as an alternative choice of housing. Studies found that citizens who lived in affordable rental housing belong to economically weaker sections whose primary mode of transport is public transit. Therefore it is quite important to validate the impact of transit service on housing rents. This research paper thus analyses the relationship between housing rents & transit proximity. Transit network of Bhopal city was mapped along with housing rents of different areas as derived from the property listing websites. Using data regarding location and pricing extracted from property rental websites and the transit station coordinates, the association between transit corridor proximity and rents with respect to distance from the transit corridor centerlines is estimated. A hedonic model for estimating this effect of transit systems on housing rents was used for the city of Bhopal, India. The model is used to estimate the external benefits concerning property rental values which may be attributed to the public transport service at the present time. Impact of public transit systems on housing rents was found significant, with strong positive associations between housing rents and transit station proximity. Implications are offered for land use planning along public transport in order to promote affordable housing near transit station. Keywords: Urban; Transit; Impact; Housing; Rent; India