The geography of subway development and commuting behavior

Abstract

This paper explores the impact of subway development on commuting behavior that arises from changes in network access induced by travel time reductions under geographical contexts of China’s mega-city subway network expansion. The analysis is carried out on a cohort of residential areas in Beijing built from geographically-referenced data on individual surveys, administrative records and changes in subway network. We find that improved subway access increase subway use, mainly due to road-side distance reductions to subway stations rather than subway-side distance contractions. Automobile use is significantly reduced due to subway-side access changes along with the subway network expansion. The effects are robust to the consideration of travel attitudes, residential self-selection and other social and spatial gradients. Our results highlight an important implication that access is dynamic in nature and its decomposed subway-side and road-side access can be a key force for guiding metro-system development and station location placements.