Modeling of Walking Access Area for Rail Transit Station Based on Trip Characteristics

This paper uses logit model to determine the reasonable walking access area of a rail transit station based on trip characteristics including traveler individual attributes, walking environment, travel time, travel costs, comfort and other factors. The principle of equal utility was used to determine the acceptable walking access area. Using the survey data of two types of stations from the rail transit in Nanjing, China, the TransCAD software is used to determine model parameters. With the method proposed in this paper, reasonable access areas for those two types of stations are obtained. Compared with the traditional method of using a single value for walking access area, the proposed model has the advantage in accounting for a number of individual and environmental factors. The study also found that the modeling results matched the values of stated preference survey very well. It is indicated that the walking access area of every rail transit station is different from each other. The walking access area of a suburban station is generally larger than that of a downtown station, and stations of the same type may also have large differences in their walking access areas due to the impacts of surrounding environments. The results show that the developed method is effective and reasonable, and is able to provide guidance for the location planning of rail transit stations.