Unravelling the impact of street network structure and gated community layout in development-oriented transit design

We investigate the associations between walking patterns and street network structure in the context of transit station development intended to create its own demand rather than serve existing demand, and an urban morphology dominated by gated communities in station areas. We record the complete actual walking routes of 3637 metro users from station exits to their destinations. We then extract pedestrian access behaviour from these routes, summarised by link use density measured by pedestrian volume on each road segment; and route detour measured by deviation from the shortest access path. We unravel the impact of two design elements in station areas on the observed pedestrian access behaviours: street network structure measured by network centralities; and gated community layout measured by the degree of gatedness, numbers, and geographic size. The route detours and network centralities are calculated based on a complete pedestrian network that includes pedestrian paths inside the gated communities. The results show that network structure significantly impacts link use density. The higher the betweenness of a link (a network measure of connectivity to shortest paths), the higher the volume of metro riders using it. The main reason for pedestrians leaving metro stations on routes that deviate from the shortest access path was the presence of gated communities. The results suggest that in countries like China where metro station development is used as a land development and urban expansion strategy and where gated neighbourhoods are a common development typology, a policy to selectively open up gated communities to more permeable pedestrian flows would be in the interest of station access with attendant benefits, by deduction, such as promoting metro ridership and increasing population health. The research framework and key findings of this study are transferable to transit developments throughout China and in similar developing contexts.