EVALUATING REGENERATION IMPACTS OF HIGH-SPEED RAIL SYSTEMS

Ennio Cascetta, Francesca Pagliara and Valerio Brancaccio Department of Transportation Engineering – University of Naples Federico II - [email protected] John Preston - Transportation Research Group – University of Southampton [email protected]

In Britain the term urban regeneration suggests a broad range of desired changes including an influx of productive investment and new jobs, the development of new commercial property and the refurbishment of existing buildings. It also suggests construction of new homes, improvements in environmental quality, and possibly even a wider range of community facilities and a strengthened network of community organisations. Moving to a wider scale, the implementation of new transport infrastructure, such as a High-Speed (HS) railway line, can influence the attractiveness of locations near HS railway stations by reducing travel times and improving accessibility for these locations. Furthermore, HS rail can improve a location’s attractiveness by its image effect: the presence of HS railway services makes a station appear modern and dynamic, and thus raises the status of this location.

This paper focuses on the economic and land-use impacts of HS rail systems. Specifically, the implicit price of HS rail accessibility is estimated using regression functions for the housing, office and shop markets considering as a case study the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) in England – now referred to as High Speed 1 (HS1). Most studies of the impact of rail accessibility on property values have analyzed local transit networks, empirical studies of the effects of long-distance rail accessibility like HS rail links on real estate prices are relatively rare.

The functional forms which have been used are the linear, log-linear, semi-log and Box-Cox- transformed forms. The results of the different regressions have been compared. The main outcome of this analysis is that there is a correlation between property prices and distance to the nearest HS station. This is particularly the case for houses and shops. For offices it seems that they follow a different “behaviour” which is mainly correlated to the property being in Inner London.

After evaluating the economic impacts, a detailed analysis has been carried out for the Camden Borough of London, where St. Pancras International Station is located, focusing only on the property values for houses. The results obtained have been compared with the average values of London and with those of the borough of Southwark (where the former HS station Waterloo was located). Specifically, between 2006 and 2008, there has been an increase in property values of 28%, 23% and 15% for Camden, Southwark and London respectively.

An evaluation of land use impacts has been taken into consideration as well. From 1995 to 2007 there has been an increase of residents equal to 28% for Camden, to 16% for Southwark and to 9% for London. Concerning the change in the number of jobs, an increase of 23%, 24% and 17% has been registered for Camden, Southwark and London respectively. At the same time a high increase of jobs has been registered in Newham, where the Stratford International Station will be opened soon, of 23% in ten years from 1995 to 2007.

The results obtained reveal considerable regeneration impacts due to the introduction of the HS rail system in England. This confirms, within UK, that transport investments undertaken by the public sector are yielding social benefits.