Evaluation of commercial land price change in response to the transport infrastructure improvement : a case study on the proposed LRT line in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Transport infrastructure typically changes the land use patterns in an area. The main aim of this research is to capture the impact of transport infrastructure on commercial property prices. The case study selected to obtain the sensitivity of the commercial property prices is the Colombo Light Rail Transit (CLRT-JICA) project. Unfortunately, the project was terminated, so the analysis was carried out for two periods: Before termination (2016 – June 2020) and After termination (June 2020 – March 2022). March of 2022 was selected as the end of the second period due to the Rupee devaluation in March and to avoid its subsequent impact on the property prices in the analysis. The commercial property price data was obtained from one of the most well-known online web advertising agents in Sri Lanka, “Lanka Property Web”. A Multiple linear regression analysis using SPSS was carried out to find the possible relationship by taking commercial property price per unit area as the dependent variable, explained by several independent variables, namely distance to the station, distance to the main junction, distance to the main road and features of the property such as the availability of parking facilities. An equality test was carried out to find the difference in distance coefficients to the station-independent variable in the regression equation for both periods. The results showed no significant difference between the distance coefficients and the station- independent variables for the two time periods. Thus, this leads to the conclusion that the LRT did not significantly affect commercial property prices, albeit with certain limitations with data and room for further research.