To identify the influences of various built environment factors on ridership at
urban rail transit stations, a case study was conducted on the Changsha Metro.
First, spatial and temporal distributions of the station-level AM peak and PM
peak boarding ridership are analyzed. The Moran’s I test indicates that both of
them show significant spatial correlations. Then, the pedestrian catchment area
of each metro station is delineated using the Thiessen polygon method with an
800-m radius. The built environment factors within each pedestrian catchment
area, involving population and employment, land use, accessibility, and station
attributes, are collected. Finally, the mixed geographically weighted regression
models are constructed to quantitatively identify the effects of these built
environment factors on the AM and PM peak ridership, respectively. The
estimation results indicate that population density and employment density have
significant but opposite influences on the AM and PM peak ridership, which can
be attributed to the opposite travel directions of commuters in the AM and PM
peak. The recreational facility density, road density, and 10-min walking
accessibility could significantly positively affect the PM peak ridership, and
their influences vary greatly over space. Besides, the operating time of
stations significantly positively affects both the AM and PM peak ridership,
transfer stations have significantly larger PM peak ridership and terminal
stations have significantly larger AM peak ridership. The findings are expected
to provide new insights for agencies to formulate appropriate measures to
improve the ridership of urban rail transit.
