Burying the Highway: The Social Valuation of Community Severance and Amenity

Community severance (CS) refers to the separation of people from facilities, services, and social networks within a community, and/or people changing travel patterns due to the physical or psychological barriers created by transport corridors and their use. Separation of neighborhoods and reductions of accessibility are some of the main effects of CS. These costs lack a proper appraisal based on willingness-to-pay (WTP) methods. Using discrete choice models on a sample of residents affected by the introduction of a ring road, we estimate the WTP to bear the costs of mitigating CS by undergrounding or burying the highway and incorporating amenity.