Evaluation of Suburban Rail Station Plans in Satellite City Considering Accessing Costs

Abstract

This study focuses on the comparison of rail station plans in a satellite city that is connected to the urban area by a suburban rail line. Based on the cost-benefit principle, the paper specifically proposes a method for calculating the passenger amounts accessing rail stations by different modes and the related full costs as well. Through this way, it not only solves the problem of evaluating different plans with various riderships, making it feasible to evaluate societal benefits of the suburban line, but also includes the commonly neglected cost of passengers' accessing trip. The new principles are implemented in a common satellite city case which demonstrates that when accessing costs is considered, small interstation spacing plan is preferred with lower full costs. Inseparable from the realization of new satellite cities' planning and development, transportation facilities, especially the rail transit is the key to guide the healthy development of such suburbs while maintaining the strong vitality for urban area in metropolises. Many suburban rail lines has been put into operation in China, yet unexpected phenomena have commonly emerged such as low levels of ridership, inadequate services and underdevelopment of the area surrounding the station area. One of the major reasons is that suburban lines are designed in a way incompatible with the passenger demand. And in order to improve the travel speed between the suburbs and urban area, suburban rail stations are widely spread causing a large number of passengers use various traffic modes to access these stations.