Local railway service is a key instrument to support the survival and the growth of small towns increasing the demand by individuals that are not interested to live in the main cities and that could accept the cost of commuting day-by-day for working. The existence of a local railway station connected with the main surrounding cities reduces the transportation cost for people leaving in small towns that cannot work in the town and reduces the risk of migration of citizens to the main cities.

The paper analyses a representative sample of Italian towns in the Lazio area for the time period 1996-2017 in order to measure the contribution of the local railway service on the land value for housing investment. Results show that the existence of local railway service matters for both the rental and ownership market but the effect may be different on the basis of the type of service provided by the railway company. The main features that affect the house value are the number of train lines servicing the station, the distance from the main cities and the number of towns served by each train line.