Regional Impact of Public Transportation Infrastructure

Abstract

This research examines the regional impact of public transportation infrastructure in the northeast megaregion of the United States: public highways, railways, transit, and airports. Infrastructure stock is valued in monetary terms from 1991 to 2009. A spatial panel approach with fixed effects is adopted to test the hypothesis of spillovers by controlling for spatial dependence. The result suggests that transportation infrastructure, in general, does have a significant impact on regional economic growth, most of which is from spillover effects. Highways have an overwhelming influence through local effects and spillover effects. The impacts from public railways and airports are significant, but transit impacts are insignificant, although a positive spillover effect is found.