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Report n°6: Urban Public Transport

Real estate added value: UPT/ERW in a combination of factors

General accessibility, which is no more than a potential, is changed by UPT/ERW. The change can frequently be significant in urban swaths served by UPT/ERW. In Montpellier, for example, the duration of a journey from the railway station to the university campus has been reduced by 50% and the journey from the large peripheral district called La Paillade to the city centre has been reduced by 30%. In Nantes, Orleans and Montpellier, the UPT/ERW gives access to 30 or 40% of jobs, to 80 or 90% of the city's sites of higher education and to 30 to 40% of commercial sites. Seen from that angle, accessibility is a resource among others and contributes to the establishment of housing and real estate prices to the same extent as scenery, the quality of construction, the social environment and educational facilities.

However, evidencing the tram's effect on the setting of prices is difficult since prices depend on a multiplicity of inter-related factors. In Nantes, one can make the point that 25% of new housing and a similar proportion of new office space has been constructed along the swaths served by the tramlines. It is notable that these proportions are slightly greater than the area covered by the swaths, and represent some 10% of built-up surfaces, but it is also true that the swaths around the major routes travelled by the UPT/ERWs already housed a quarter of the population. In Strasbourg, it appears that rents have increased faster in the swaths serviced by the tramlines than elsewhere in the town, but the requalification of public space brought about by the insertion of the tramlines also played a role by triggering a movement of price rises which were previously low because of the mediocre quality of these areas.