The Effect of Heavy Rail Transit on Socioeconomic Indicators of a City

The purpose of this paper is to analyze rapid heavy-rail systems in largest world cities as graphs (mathematical objects) and to find out whether the complexity of the system influences city socioeconomic indicators as GMP (gross metropolitan prod- uct), employment and other variables. The main hypothesis is that well-developed systems are able to decrease transaction costs for a vast number of economic agents in the city and thus increase productivity of the economy. In order to support the hypothesis, I construct 50 graphs based on subways of largest world cities, calculate indices that reflect the complexity of their structure and apply regression methods with inclusion of instrumental variables in order to find relationship with socioe- conomic variables. I find that complex systems lead to higher GMP, employment and city’s position in Innovation Cities Index with highly significant coefficients and then conclude that rapid rail transit systems development is one of the integral steps in city development.