Accessibility Indices: A Connection to Residential Land Prices and Location Choices

Specifications of accessibility indices range from simple minimum travel-time indices, to measures of cumulative opportunities within specified distance or time thresholds, to maximum utility measures. This paper presents models relating a variety of general accessibility indices for the Dallas-Fort Worth region of Texas to property valuations for single-family dwelling units and commercial units, and to household residential location choices. Hedonic models are used to assess the importance of access on property valuations, while controlling for improvement attributes and parcel size. Multinomial logit models are used to derive logsum measures of accessibility as well as to assess the impact of access on location choices, while controlling for household demographics. Three functional specifications of access measures were used. Job accessibility (a proxy for work and other opportunities) was estimated to positively impact residential land values, in statistically and economically significant ways, suggesting – as hypothesized here – that land rents track property owners’ assessments of accessibility, while other, common accessibility measures do not perform as well. After controlling for this measure, access to parkspace (a proxy for availability of outdoor recreational activities) and access to retail jobs (a proxy for shopping opportunities) were not valued in the land market. Distances to regional CBDs and household heads’ workplace locations also played important roles in location predictions, often in the presence of the more general access measures.