Photo by Diego Mazz on Unsplash
Photo by Diego Mazz on Unsplash - Arts & Humanities - Nathan Skolski Recent UBC research finds the expansion of rapid transit generally benefits households from all income groups, but higher income households benefit the most. Dr. Andrea Craig is an assistant professor of economics in UBC Okanagan's Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Her latest research examines the effects of rapid transit expansion on neighbourhood prices, income and household welfare. Dr. Craig, alongside Bank of Canada economist Dr. Alex Chernoff, analyzed the expansion of Vancouver's SkyTrain system, including the Millennium and Canada lines, using Statistics Canada data covering a 10-year period. "Public transit infrastructure is often characterized as a government expenditure that improves the welfare of predominantly low-income households," explains Dr. Craig. "But by examining years of data spanning the multi-billion-dollar expansion of rapid transit, we estimate that eventually, higher-income households benefit more from this rapid transit expansion than lower-income households." By modelling each household's choice of where to live, the researchers found the rapid transit improvement eventually increased the monthly dwelling prices in both new and previously SkyTrain-connected neighbourhoods. The research determines two opposing effects of transit expansion on prices in these pre-connected neighbourhoods.
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