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  5. Evaluating the Impact of Urban Transit Infrastructure: Evidence from Bogotá’s TransMilenio

American Economic Review

ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)

Evaluating the Impact of Urban Transit Infrastructure: Evidence from Bogotá’s TransMilenio

  • Nick Tsivanidis
American Economic Review (Forthcoming)

Abstract

This paper estimates the effects of improving public transit infrastructure on city structure and welfare. It develops a sufficient statistics approach common to a class of quantitative urban models, and estimates the elasticities needed to implement the approach using data and variation from the construction of the world’s largest Bus Rapid Transit system in Bogotá, Colombia. These models perform well in explaining the adjustment of economic activity to the system. The standard approach to measure the welfare gains from new infrastructure based on the value of travel time saved only accounts for 52% of the total welfare gain.

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