Firm Births, Access to Transit, and Agglomeration in Portland, Oregon, and Dallas, Texas

Abstract

The formation of new firms is one process by which economies grow and innovate. Public transportation services may facilitate the birth of new firms by both providing better access and causing local densification that leads to agglomeration economies. In this study firm births are investigated to determine how they are related to newly provided light rail transit service in two metropolitan areas in the United States. A geocoded time-series database of firm establishments in Dallas, Texas, and Portland, Oregon, from 1991 through 2008 is used. The data set allows the study of spatial patterns by industry and the analysis of the relationship of firm births to rail station proximity, accessibility, and local agglomeration while controlling for a number of potentially confounding factors. Positive, large, and statistically significant relationships are found in Portland between rail station proximity and firm births. The rail proximity results in Dallas are also generally positive, though not as large; this finding is consistent with the smaller accessibility value of rail in Dallas, as well as policies encouraging commercial development near rail in Portland. Rail proximity increases firm births across almost all industrial sectors in both of these metropolitan areas when controlling for the negative effects on firm births of local own-industry employment. Local block-level agglomeration and generalized accessibility are also highly significant but appear to work independently of rail access. These results imply that passenger rail service increases firm births near rail stations by expanding access to the labor market but not by increasing information spillovers or increasing face-to-face interactions.

Relationship Between the Built Environment and the Location Choice of High-Tech Firms: Evidence from the Pearl River Delta

“…The results obtained using GD technique also yield a relatively high q-value (0.5159). Similar findings were found in earlier studies, which revealed positive impacts of the TIL or accessibility condition on the agglomeration of high-technology firms and manufacturing companies [29,[72][73][74]. Ye examined and verified a significant positive correlation between the new firms in the PRD and the transportation infrastructure [30].…”

Accessibility and agglomeration: A theoretical framework for understanding the connection between transportation modes, agglomeration benefits, and types of businesses

“…Research that evaluates the localized association between transportation systems and new business creation also generally confirms the positive role of transportation investments on business agglomeration (Chatman, Noland, & Klein, 2016;Credit, 2018;Holl, 2004aHoll, , 2004bMejia-Dorantes, Paez, & Vassallo, 2012;Song, Lee, Anderson, & Lakshmanan, 2012). However, given the small number of studies directly evaluating business agglomeration around transportation investments, additional work in this area is certainly needed.…”

“…The existing work on the connection between transportation and agglomeration does not sufficiently explore the fine‐grained, individual mechanisms through which specific transportation modes increase agglomerative potential (Chatman & Noland, ). And while researchers have begun to study the connection between public transit modes and new business creation in specific industries and regions (Chatman et al, ; Credit, ; Mejia‐Dorantes et al, ; Song et al, ), additional study areas, business types, regions, temporal variation, and methodological approaches are needed. With the increasing availability of point‐based establishment datasets such as InfoUSA and NETS, researchers are able to begin to examine the theorized connections between transportation modes and business types laid out in this paper.…”

The Missing Link between Place and Productivity? The Impact of Transit-Oriented Development on the Knowledge and Creative Economy

“…Yet it is theorized that firm productivity might increase in a TOD due to clustering and networking (Nelson et al 2015). Moreover, the majority of studies on economic outcomes of TODs have not properly controlled for station areas' built environments (Chatman et. al.…”