Interactive Impacts of Built Environment Factors on Metro Ridership Using GeoDetector: From the Perspective of TOD

TOD (transit-oriented development) is a planning concept that uses public transportation stations as the center of development, and it aims to integrate land use efficiency and transportation planning linkages to encourage the use of public transportation. The impact of metro TOD projects on urban transportation is multifaceted and complex, and the promotion of metro TOD ridership is an important topic in academic circles. However, the theoretical analysis framework of the impact mechanism of metro TOD ridership is still not perfect. Most studies ignore the TOD characteristics of the stations and the interaction between the station area’s land use and the station area functional linkage. Moreover, a few studies have focused on the mechanisms of the impact of TOD built environment factors on the spatial differentiation of station ridership, and the interactive effects of built environment factors. In this paper, the factors of a metro TOD station built environment were selected based on the node–place–linkage model expanded by the 5D principle of TOD, and a solution is provided for the computable transformation of the 5D principle. The GeoDetector method was used to detect the individual and interactive effects of the TOD built environment factors. The results show that the spatial distribution of the metro TOD station area ridership shows a core–peripheral structure and spatial heterogeneity, both on weekdays and weekends. Moreover, the individual effects of each factor can explain up to 49% and 35% of the traffic distribution on weekdays and weekends, respectively. In addition, the two-factor interactive effect has a stronger influence on metro ridership. The interactive effect can explain up to 72% and 77% of the traffic distribution on weekdays and weekends, respectively. Furthermore, the individual effects of each factor exhibited spatial heterogeneity in the local spaces, showing spatial facilitation and inhibition, respectively. Finally, the main policy recommendations are as follows: One of the important ways to guide the development of cities toward polycentric structure is to promote a TOD model in the peripheral areas of the cities. Building more public open spaces in TOD station areas and improving the collection and distribution capacity of the bus transport systems can effectively stimulate the ridership of metro stations.