NYC-WTC_000187725

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document >■

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3 CHAPTER THREE

DESIGN, ALGORITHM, COMPUTATIONAL REQUIREMENTS, AND APPLICATIONS OF NYSTA - A LINEAR REGRESSION MODEL OF TRANSIT STATION AREA LAND VALUE GRADIENTS A station area model (NYSTA) has been designed and calibrated for the area served by the New York City subway system to predict I parcel-specific changes in land value with transport improvements based upon a statistical explanation of the relative importance of access among the myriad locational attributes of a site that create its land value. NYSTA differs from NYREG, the regional equilibrium model, in that it utilizes multivariate regression analysis to determine the land value equations that are applied independently, without simultaneous feedback relationships, to solve for changes in property values, assuming an initiating change in transit policy or service affecting the neighborhood or corridor level. Although the regression technique has acknowledged weaknesses at the regional scale, stemming from its inability to model separate shifts in demand and supply functions, at the local level hedonic regression relationships can confer benefits not available from large scale equilibrium models. For one, NYSTA couples a broader consideration of physical, transport, and socioeconomic SB variables with a finer grain geographic scale. Measures are computed at the parcel level by distance from a station or a line; not by broad zonal averages. As another benefit, NYSTA solves for changes in market values calibrated by actual real estate transactions, making the model’s output more directly applicable to value capture tax administration policy. And then, again, transit inputs to the model that serve as policy or service-related levers are also calibrated on actual operating characteristics of the system, making simulations of transit alternatives for specific stations or corridors a viable management tool. The model is designed in the tradition of locational studies concerned with access to an array of public services, including transit, highways, neighborhood parks, public beachfront, clean water and sewer services, and other open space. Analysis is focused on the parcel, rather than on the zone, as the basic unit of observation. The approach is cross-sectional, rather than time dimensional. It is more focused on explaining the impact on land value of differences in transit service quality among different transit stations, rather than the mere benefit of proximity to a station. As such, it provides the policy analyst with a tool for I predicting the parcel-specific, neighborhoodwide, corridor level, or aggregate systemwide impact of alternative actions.

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NYC-WTC_000187782