Urban Service and Environmental Stressor

Abstract

We examine the impact of a relatively new mass transit line on residential mobility, utilizing a survey of respondents living adjacent to the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). The hypothesis is that as perceived costs (e.g., noise) of the system increase, preferences for outward mobility will increase, while as local benefits increase (e.g., accessibility to the system), preferences for inward mobility will increase. Preferences for outward mobility per se were unrelated to BART's local attributes. However, BART-related reasons for moving varied as predicted. Residents near aerial trackways, which maximize local environmental costs, had greater preferences for outward mobility. Residents near stations, which maximize the service's local benefits, had the highest reports of inward mobility. We examine the mediating effects of local environmental and social circumstances and discuss the implications of this particular study for other metropolitan regions.

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