Light Rail Makes Sense

The Surrey Leader ran a story about light rail and the “Transit for Tomorrow” plan yesterday. You can read the article at their website.

In other news… While the US housing market and economy in general continues to claps, it looks like houses that are near light rail in Denver, Colorado are actually rising in value.

Homes near light-rail stations along the southeast line, which opened in November 2006, have increased by an average of nearly 4 percent over the past two years, according to an analysis by Your Castle Real Estate. But the rest of the Denver market declined an average of 7.5 percent.

"I know that it's always been a good neighborhood, but I didn't think it was like that," said Humphrey, who doesn't drive and frequently uses public transportation.

The closer a home is to the station, the more its value increases, according to the Your Castle analysis. Homes less than a half-mile from a station increased an average of 17.6 percent, while those 1 1/2 to 2 miles away increased just 0.1 percent on average. The data varied widely among stations, however.

We’ve been talking about the value of building light rail for some time on this blog. And this recent article is just another case that proves not only is light rail good for the environment and your pocket book, but its good for the economy. In Denver under the FasTracks program, the Regional Transportation District plans to create six new commuter-rail and light-rail corridors and extend three existing corridors by 2017. They are adding 192km of rail to their already 63.4km of rail.