Public transit has often been proposed as a solution to the spatial mismatch hypothesis but the link between public transit accessibility and employment has not been firmly established in the literature. Los Angeles provides an interesting case study – as the city has transformed from zero rail infrastructure before the 1990s to a large network consisting of subway, light rail, and bus rapid transit servicing diverse neighborhoods. The paper uses confidential panel data from the American Community Survey, treating route placement as endogenous, which is then instrumented by the distance from the centroid of each tract in LA to a hypothetical Metro route. Overall, the paper finds proximity to Metro stations increases employment for residents, which is robust to using both a binary and continuous measure of distance. Additionally, there is evidence that increased job density in neighborhoods near new transit stations is contributing to the employment increase.
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