Exploring Non-Linear Effects of a Station-Area Built Environment on Origin–Destination Flow in a Large-Scale Urban Metro Network

Wenming Rao (), Yuan Yao, Siping Ke and Zhao Liu
Additional contact information
Wenming Rao: School of Traffic Engineering, Nanjing Institute of Technology, Nanjing 211167, China
Yuan Yao: School of Traffic Engineering, Nanjing Institute of Technology, Nanjing 211167, China
Siping Ke: Intelligent Transportation Systems Research Center, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
Zhao Liu: School of Traffic Engineering, Nanjing Institute of Technology, Nanjing 211167, China

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 19, 1-19

Abstract: Origin–destination (OD) passenger flow is a critical variable for metro system planning and operation. While numerous studies have investigated the influence of the built environment on passenger flow, most have focused on ingress or egress flows at metro stations. The impact of the built environment on OD flow dynamics, particularly the differences between origin-side and destination-side effects, remains poorly understood. This study proposes a novel method for exploring the non-linear effects of station-area built environments on OD flow in large-scale metro networks. First, hourly OD flows and station-area built environment features were extracted from multi-source data. Next, an analytical framework was developed to model the built environment–OD flow relationship using a gradient boosting decision tree model. Finally, the contributions of built environment variables and their non-linear effects on OD flows were systematically investigated. The proposed method was implemented on the Suzhou metro network in China. Test results show that most built environment variables exhibit time-varying, non-linear correlations with OD flows. Even the same variable demonstrates notable differences in its effect between the origin and destination sides. The findings of this study provide valuable guidance for metro planning and station-area urban development.

Keywords: metro network; built environment; OD flow; non-linear effect; GBDT model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/19/8829/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/19/8829/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:19:p:8829-:d:1763635

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().