Rethinking bus-to-metro accessibility in new town development: Case studies in Shanghai

With the rapid urbanization in cities around the world, new towns that are close to the existing urban fringe have been developed to accommodate the increasing population. However, due to the long development time of the infrastructure systems in these new towns, the establishment of public transportation services usually lags behind the population expansion. Therefore, to ensure urban accessibility, governments utilize bus networks to bridge the connectivity gaps of metro systems. To assist the design and decision-making required for bus and metro interconnectivity and optimize public transportation networks, this study proposed a quantitative network-based framework. The proposed framework extended the existing social network analysis theory and identified five indicators to assess and optimize the network design. To validate the proposed method, nine typical cases in Shanghai were examined. The results based on the proposed analysis framework suggest that more edges between access points (bus stops within the walkable area of a metro station entrance) and other nodes can improve the accessibility of the study area and create a well-integrated system. Therefore, this study is able to provide an insightful understanding of intermodal transportation coordination and transport facility arrangement.