An Open-Source Framework of Generating Network-Based Transit Catchment Areas by Walking

Diao Lin,Jian Yang,Ruoxin Zhu,Liqiu Meng

doi:10.3390/ijgi9080467

Abstract

The transit catchment area is an important concept for public transport planning. This study proposes a methodological framework to generate network-based transit catchment areas by walking. Three components of the framework, namely subgraph construction, extended shortest path tree construction and contour generation are presented step by step. Methods on how to generalize the framework to the cases of the directed road network and non-point facilities are developed. The implementation of the framework is provided as an open-source project. Using metro stations in Shanghai as a case study, we illustrate the feasibility of the proposed framework. Experiments show that the proposed method generates catchment areas of high geospatial accuracy and significantly increases computational efficiency. The open-source program can be applied to support research related to transit catchment areas and has the potential to be extended to include more routing-related factors.

Highlights

The transit catchment area (TCA) is an important concept for transport planning, especially for public transit planning
An upsurge of interest has been witnessed in the research on TCAs, including TCA modeling [1,3] and TCA analysis [4,5], which have shown that an in-depth understanding of a TCA can facilitate planning in several aspects
A well-defined TCA can support the design of road networks, land uses, and floor area ratios around transit stations [6,7,8]

Summary

Introduction

The transit catchment area (TCA) is an important concept for transport planning, especially for public transit planning. The catchment area of a transit station can be defined as a geographical area where the majority of passengers will typically be found [1,2]. A well-defined TCA can support the design of road networks, land uses, and floor area ratios around transit stations [6,7,8]. The TCA is one of the fundamental elements for transit-ridership modeling [9,10,11]. This is because several potential ridership-related factors, such as population, employment, and road quality, are commonly measured based on the catchment area of a station. An investigation of the coverage of metro catchment areas can help planners to determine underserved and overserved areas of the metro system and support the planning of new metro stations

Objectives

Methods

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Discussion

Conclusion