Alanazi, Naif Fluah K.; (2021) The influence of urban street environments on levels of metro use and walk access mode share. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

The nature of the relationship between urban street environments and the levels of station use and walk access mode share of urban metro systems remains unclear in transport studies. This thesis explores these relationships (at station catchment level) in several different urban rail systems in the US - Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta, and Washington DC - that are as comparable as possible with Middle East conditions (in terms of population densities, rail network size, spatial structure, climate, etc.); and then compares model relationships to one of the metro systems in the Middle East (Dubai Metro) in the United Arab Emirates. Aggregate socio-demographic, land use and service frequency data is assembled from different urban datasets within a 400 metre and 800 metre radius of selected rail stations. In addition, for each station catchment area, a newly developed street network connectivity (S-Conn) index (presence of sidewalks, completeness of sidewalks, presence of crossings, and presence of barriers) and a street network quality (S-Qual) index (speed limit, sidewalk condition, dropped kerbs, seating areas, street lights, and amount of street trees) is developed and applied to sample of the street network segments. In general, S-Conn and S-Qual scores more highly within 400m of stations than it does between 400m and 800m, in all cities. Using this collated data, statistical models have been developed to estimate the relationships between the various explanatory variables and average weekday boardings and walk access mode share at selected stations. The study is particularly interested to explore whether urban S-Conn and S-Qual are significant explanatory variables in these models, both within 400m and 800m of stations. The study finds that the S-Conn index is positively associated with the average weekday boardings in the four US cities; but S-Qual is only significant in a few of the models. The findings also showed that the S-Conn index is positively associated with walk access mode shares both in the four US cities and in Dubai models. However, this result does not mean that the S-Qual is not important; its significance may differ for different cities and models. The study concludes that transport planners should take more account of S-Conn around station catchments when planning public transport infrastructure projects, in order to increase station patronage and walk access modal shares.

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