Empirical Examination of the Relationship between Firm Location and Transportation Facilities

This study uses a location and profile of the firms in the six-county Chicago region from 1981 and 1999 to compare the businesses’ proximity to freeway ramps and transit stations for those two time periods. A series of regression models were constructed to assess whether their location patterns with respect to transportation facilities have changed over the last two decades. The data suggest that controlling for exogenous factors, businesses have moved closer to the freeway ramps in the last two decades. Meanwhile the distance to the transit stations has not changed except in the city of Chicago, where it has decreased. These findings suggest a shift in location choice behaviors in the urban core and the suburbs. Specifically, the firms are valuing access to rail stations at greater degree in the urban core areas, while in the suburbs, they are placing more importance on the proximity to the ramps. The concentration of businesses near the expressway ramps in the inner and middle suburbs suggests an emergence of a pattern in those areas that corresponds with a polycentric development, with freeway ramps as the focal points. Finally, the findings indicate a shift, not a decrease, in the importance of transportation access for business location choice.