Assessing Impacts of Freeway Truck Traffic on Residential Property Values Southern California Case Study Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • This study investigates the impact of freeway traffic (especially truck traffic) on 4,715 single-family houses located in the busy transportation corridor that links the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles, California. These houses are located at least 200 m from the nearest arterial road; this distance was selected to filter out the effects of arterial road traffic. To minimize the risk of omitted variable bias and to deal with spatial autocorrelation, researchers estimated a fine-grained fixed effects model. A 1% increase in total traffic would reduce by only $24 the value of a $420,000 house located within 100 m of a freeway. By contrast, a 1% increase in truck traffic would decrease the value of a $420,000 house located between 100 and 400 m from the nearest freeway by $2,000 to $2,750. These results are important for policy makers and for homeowners because of the expanding role of trucking in the economy.

published proceedings

  • TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH RECORD

author list (cited authors)

  • Li, W., & Saphores, J.

citation count

  • 18

complete list of authors

  • Li, Wei||Saphores, Jean-Daniel

publication date

  • January 2012