Spatial Heterogeneity of Sustainable Transportation Offer Values: A Comparative Analysis of Nantes Urban and Periurban/Rural Areas (France)

Innovative solutions have been implemented to promote sustainable mobility in urban areas. In the Nantes area (northwestern part of France), alternatives to single-occupant car use have increased in the past few years. In the urban area, there is an efficient public transport supply, including tramways and a "busway" (Bus Rapid Transit), as well as bike-sharing services. In periurban and rural areas, there are carpool areas, regional buses and the new "tram-train" lines. In this article, we focus on the impact on house prices of these "sustainable" transportation infrastructures and policies, in order to evaluate their values. The implicit price of these sustainable transport offers was estimated through hedonic price functions describing the Nantes urban and periurban/rural housing markets. Spatial regression models (SAR, SEM, SDM and GWR) were carried out to capture the effect of both spatial autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity. The results show patterns of spatial heterogeneity of transportation offer implicit prices at two scales: (i) between urban and periurban/rural areas, as well as (ii) within each territory. In the urban area, the distance to such offers was significantly associated with house prices. These associations varied by type of transportation system (positive for tramway and railway stations and negative for bike-sharing stations). In periurban and rural areas, having a carpool area in a 1500-m buffer around the home was negatively associated with house prices, while having a regional bus station in a 500-m buffer was non-significant. Distance to the nearest railway station was negatively associated with house prices. These findings provide research avenues to help public policy-makers promote sustainable mobility and pave the way for more locally targeted interventions.