Exploration of the Impact of Built Environment Factors on Morning and Evening Peak Ridership at Urban Rail Transit Stations: A Case Study of Changsha, China

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.