How Transport Policies affect Residential Location Choice, Living Space Consumption and Housing Costs

Abstract

One of the main challenges of spatial planning is to make the transport system more sustainable. While many studies examine the impact of transport policies on transport-related pollution or mode choice (see e.g. Buehler et al. 2017), impacts beyond transport aspects are much less frequently analysed. However, the implementation of transport policies may also have other long-term effects, in particular on housing.

We examined how the implementation of a transport policy aiming at a strict modal shift from cars to more sustainable modes of transport affects residential location choice, living space consumption and housing costs. Therefore, we combined a transport model with a model that, coupled with a synthetic population, iteratively determines residential location choice, living space consumption and housing costs, using Germanys Frankfurt region as a study area.

Our results show that transport policies aiming at a strict modal shift also affect housing markets. In terms of residential location choice, proximity to work becomes more important and centres and agglomerations become more attractive. This leads to higher population densities and housing costs in these areas. Our results highlight the need to take these effects into account when designing policies in both the housing and transport sectors.