Economic impacts of the urban ring : a spatial analysis

Abstract

Many projects are targeted at stimulating economic development. Some research has studied the overall economic impacts of development proposed. However, quantitative studies of the spatial distribution of economic impacts are often neglected. In this thesis, I study ways of modeling the spatial distribution of economic impacts from regional infrastructure investments. For this study, I assume that certain distributional impacts depend upon estimated neighborhood-to-neighborhood changes in travel time. I use the proposed Urban Ring in the Greater Boston Area as my case study, and origin-destination (O-D) data for metropolitan Boston to identify current journey-to-work commuting patterns. However, the existing set of ridership data from the Census Transportation Planning Package (CTPP) are time and skill demanding to manipulate. I also estimate ridership using residential and job location data without the O-D matrix. I find that the fractions of total travel time savings are the largest in Allston / Brighton, Jamaica Plain, and Roxbury. These neighborhoods are characterized by large population sizes and high population densities; they locate in between the Central Business District and the suburb. Between the results computed from the two sets of ridership data, there are some differences in magnitude, but not in the general ranking, of neighborhood impacts.