Abstract
Public transit professionals continue to seek methods that offer greater service opportunities without a material increase in the costs of service provision. One strategy is to construct bus transit centers, which operate much like the airline hub-and-spoke concept. More frequent destinations can be made available with shorter patron wait times and little or no increase in the number of bus hours. Patrons tend to appreciate the convenience of a transfer occurring in a lighted facility as well as the increased level of bus service. Many bus-based centers may be close to single-family neighborhoods, and residents might express concern about property values given the presence of a bus transit center nearby. In addition to the bus transit centers that serve traditional local or express routes, several bus rapid transit lines are planned in other cities, with stations that might lead nearby communities to ask similar questions about property values. The impact of bus transit centers is assessed on nearby single-family residential property values in Houston, Texas. Five Houston transit centers show that the transit centers in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods have a positive influence on property values. In the single affluent neighborhood in the study, results indicate the transit center negatively affects property values, but the influence is less than that of other variables.
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