The role of commuter rail accessibility in the formation of residential land values: exploring spatial heterogeneity in peri-urban and remote areas

Résumé En

As an alternative to private car, rail accessibility is part of environmental policies.The effects of light or heavy rail have been widely covered by the literature inurban areas. High-speed rail accessibility has been extensively studied at nationalor regional scales as well. In-between, only few studies have considered commuterrail accessibility at the scale of metropolitan areas. However, more and more householdsin Europe have been settling in peri-urban or remote areas around large conurbations,driven by the significant increase in residential land values since 2000. Inthis article, we aimed to uncover, through hedonic pricing, the effect of commuterrail accessibility in the formation of residential land values in the Loire-AtlantiqueDépartement in France (around the conurbation of Nantes Métropole). We used atfirst an ordinary least square model (OLS). Since nonlinear relationship betweenproximity to public transport and land values is commonly assumed, we previouslyapplied a generalized additive model (GAM) that revealed threshold effects. Toexplore spatial heterogeneity in the relationship between commuter rail accessibilityand residential land values, we used subsequently a multiscale geographicallyweighted regression model (MGWR). We found sound evidence of commuter railaccessibility effect in two specific areas: in the peri-urban area of Nantes Métropole,North of the conurbation, and in a remote area, in the Western part of the Département.The emphasis of commuter rail accessibility should help decision-makers toconvert rail stations into multimodal exchange poles to contain the modal share ofprivate car in peri-urban and remote areas.