Effects of Urban Expressways on Housing Prices: A Case Study of Qiushi Highway, Hangzhou, China

This paper discusses the effects of the construction of urban expressway on accessibility and further investigates the relationship between changes in accessibility and house prices caused by expressway construction. Taking the Qiushi Highway Phase III project in China as an example, a hedonic price model and difference-in-difference method are used to analyze the impact. The main innovation of the study is how it considers the improvement of the overall traffic conditions brought about by the construction of the expressway. In addition, three distance impedance parameters—namely Euclidean distance, road network distance, and actual transit time—are used to estimate the value of traffic accessibility during the process. The main research conclusions are as follows: (1) The opening of the Qiushi Highway Phase III project can significantly improve the accessibility of the surrounding areas to the city center. Additionally, this improvement can be extended to further sites through the urban expressway network; (2) The results of the difference-in-difference method show that the premium effect of the city expressway on house prices will not be directly generated by the expressway’s geographical proximity to the project. In fact, the expressway will increase accessibility in some related areas and will also have a further positive impact on housing prices; (3) Among the three types of traffic impedance parameters, accessibility calculated on the basis of actual transit time has the strongest connection to house prices.