Long commutes may not only be annoying, but they may also be a factor in lowering the price of a home. That was one of the conclusions that Alison Reum, extension faculty in the Agricultural Economics department at the University of Kentucky came to during a lecture Wednesday, September 19 in the Urban Studies Institute building.

The talk centered on how people respond to traffic congestion. Reum looked at factors like having children or rigid work schedules, and their effect on choices. “This is the favorite paper I’ve ever done,” Reum said. “I find myself always coming back to it.”

Reum’s analysis used Wake County, North Carolina, as its base. Raleigh, the state capital, is in Wake County, as is North Carolina State University. The research employed several models. One was a hedonic model of housing, or looking at the price of a house based on its attributes. Another was a choice model on trips. “She’s the first one I know of to use the hedonic housing model this way, its very interesting,” said Frank Goetzke, assistant professor of Urban and Public Affairs. Neighborhood sized units were used for measure. This county worked well because it had the nation’s largest transportation time increase from 1990 to 2000, as well as a 47 percent population increase.

Coupled with this are the facts that infrastructure lagged behind the growth severely, Reum said. Congestion, Reum found, is a significant deterrent to taking any trip. Both work trips and non-work trips were included in the study.

“Most researchers think that congestion is a peak-hour phenomenon, but Alison concluded that it’s just as important to look at non-work trips,” Goetzke said. Social status and neighborhood affluence could negate the effect of congestion, Reum said. While the price loss from congestion might not be substantial, home prices are not rising as much as they could without congestion, she said.

Congestion policies like tolls won’t affect short-term trips, but will cause people to move over the long-term, Goetzke said, adding that families with rigid structures will be less likely to be affected by a policy like a toll. “I made so many of my daily choices and where I live based on congestion and these questions,” she said. - story by Patrick Lewis