The Examination of the Effects of Land Use Development on the Balance of Mass Transit Ridership

The balance of the origin-destination (O-D) ridership distribution is an essential characteristic of a sustainable transit system. However, the existing ridership patterns of transit system in many cities are still off-balance, leading to the inefficient utilization of available capacity. As a result, only one direction is overcrowded whereas the other is not. Many literatures suggest that the transit ridership distribution is generally affected by land use around stations due to the different rates of generated and attracted passengers during each period of time. Therefore, the objective of this study is to verify the effects of land use development according to the Transit Oriented Development (TOD) principle on the balance of the O-D ridership along the transit route, as measured by the discrepancies between the numbers of onboard passengers in stations along a single train line. This study has applied the modified Fluid Analogy Method to reflect the travel behavior of mass transit trip distribution. The results show that, to balance the O-D ridership along a linear and stand-alone transit route, the residential areas should be located near the terminal stations with the sub-residential areas in the interval to shorten the distance of home-based trips. The business areas should be densely situated in the middle of mass transit route, while the retail areas should be located dispersedly all along the route. This study has further applied a proposed model with a case study of MRT Blue Line in Thailand to verify the assumption that the location of the mixed-use project along MRT transit route has impacts on the balance of its ridership. This implication can be a guideline for integrating the mixed-use project development and the land use planning to achieve the sustainable transport in the overall perspective.