Assessing the equality of external benefits in public transport investments: The impact of urban railways on real estate values

This paper studies the impact of urban public transport systems on real estate values, focusing on equality issues. It is known that, in addition to direct benefits, the construction of metro lines also produces indirect benefits, including changes in the value of buildings located near stations; these impacts are usually neglected in transport planning. In this paper, we propose a methodology to assess equality from this point of view and examine the case study of the city of Naples, highlighting how the current configuration of the railway network produces inequalities concerning impacts on property values. The proposed methodology, based on the Gini index, is then applied to two possible scenarios, related to the extension and improvement of the network.