The value of passenger rail access

This study quantifies the effect of train station openings on residential house prices across Germany over a 12-year period to provide generalizable evidence on the valuation of access to passenger rail by households. It is based on data on about 90 train station openings between 2009 and 2020 in Germany and a Differencein-Differences model that uses three different control group variants to cover alternative assumptions about unobserved regional heterogeneity to mitigate problems arising from endogenous transport infrastructure provision. The results indicate that train station openings increase residential house prices on average by 5% (€18,000) within a distance of up to two to three kilometers. Notably, these positive effects are observed exclusively for properties without prior access to passenger rail services, and are significantly larger in more densely populated and urban areas.