IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jotrge/v123y2025ics0966692325000018.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evaluating sustainable urban mobility for public transit incorporating the geospatial modeling approach

Author

Listed:
  • Hwang, Jae-Yeon
  • Cho, Shin-Hyung
  • Park, Shin Hyoung

Abstract

Cities have established public transit infrastructures to provide equitable services to every citizen at a low cost, thus minimizing traffic congestion. Public transportation facilities, including bus stops, urban railway stations, and terminals, provide physical convenience to passengers. Considering economic efficiency, the location selection of public transport facilities causes an imbalance in public transit accessibility within the city. Therefore, to alleviate spatial imbalance, it is necessary to devise a public transportation system evaluation method. This study uses revealed travel data to develop a competitiveness index for sustainable urban mobility in public transit. The developed competitiveness index considers two aspects: (1) mobility factors referring to in-vehicle, transfer, and waiting times, and (2) travel demand and economic factors of travel costs. Square cells of 500 m × 500 m were used to apply the geographical explanatory variables in Seoul. The developed competitiveness index ranged from −22.7 to 23.25, thus confirming the difference in sustainable mobility services between the urban center and outskirts. Notably, a spatial cell with subway stations has a high competitiveness index because subway facilities are the main factors that increase the competitiveness of public transit. Multiscale geographically weighted regression, which identifies interactions through spatial dependence and heterogeneity, is employed to analyze the causal relationship between spatial mode competitiveness and socioeconomic characteristics. The developed index is expected to contribute to the establishment of public transportation policies and systems to alleviate imbalances by identifying areas vulnerable to public transit services.

Suggested Citation

  • Hwang, Jae-Yeon & Cho, Shin-Hyung & Park, Shin Hyoung, 2025. "Evaluating sustainable urban mobility for public transit incorporating the geospatial modeling approach," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jotrge:v:123:y:2025:i:c:s0966692325000018
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2025.104110
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692325000018
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2025.104110?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Salih, Samal Hama & Lee, Jinwoo (Brian), 2022. "Measuring transit accessibility: A dispersion factor to recognise the spatial distribution of accessible opportunities," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    2. Lv, Huitao & Li, Haojie & Chen, Yanlu & Feng, Tao, 2023. "An origin-destination level analysis on the competitiveness of bike-sharing to underground using explainable machine learning," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    3. El-Geneidy, Ahmed & Levinson, David & Diab, Ehab & Boisjoly, Genevieve & Verbich, David & Loong, Charis, 2016. "The cost of equity: Assessing transit accessibility and social disparity using total travel cost," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 302-316.
    4. Cristina Del-Real & Chandra Ward & Mina Sartipi, 2023. "What do people want in a smart city? Exploring the stakeholders’ opinions, priorities and perceived barriers in a medium-sized city in the United States," International Journal of Urban Sciences, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(S1), pages 50-74, January.
    5. Kim, Kyoungok, 2023. "Investigation of modal integration of bike-sharing and public transit in Seoul for the holders of 365-day passes," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    6. Wu, Hao & Lee, Jinwoo (Brian) & Levinson, David, 2023. "The node-place model, accessibility, and station level transit ridership," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    7. Lee, Hasik & Park, Ho-Chul & Kho, Seung-Young & Kim, Dong-Kyu, 2019. "Assessing transit competitiveness in Seoul considering actual transit travel times based on smart card data," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    8. Kirtonia, Sajeeb & Sun, Yanshuo, 2022. "Evaluating rail transit's comparative advantages in travel cost and time over taxi with open data in two U.S. cities," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 75-87.
    9. Zhang, Guozheng & Wang, Dianhai & Cai, Zhengyi & Zeng, Jiaqi, 2024. "Competitiveness of public transit considering travel time reliability: A case study for commuter trips in Hangzhou, China," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    10. Li, Mengya & Kwan, Mei-Po & Hu, Wenyan & Li, Rui & Wang, Jun, 2023. "Examining the effects of station-level factors on metro ridership using multiscale geographically weighted regression," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    11. R. S. Thilakaratne & S. C. Wirasinghe, 2016. "Implementation of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) on an optimal segment of a long regular bus route," International Journal of Urban Sciences, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(1), pages 15-29, March.
    12. Ratna Ayu Komalawati & Jaebin Lim, 2021. "Reality of compact development in a developing country: focusing on perceived quality of life in Jakarta, Indonesia," International Journal of Urban Sciences, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(4), pages 542-573, October.
    13. Lucas, Karen, 2012. "Transport and social exclusion: Where are we now?," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 105-113.
    14. A. Stewart Fotheringham & Wenbai Yang & Wei Kang, 2017. "Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR)," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 107(6), pages 1247-1265, November.
    15. Saghapour, Tayebeh & Moridpour, Sara & Thompson, Russell G., 2016. "Public transport accessibility in metropolitan areas: A new approach incorporating population density," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 273-285.
    16. Lyu, Tao & Wang, Yuanqing & Ji, Shujuan & Feng, Tao & Wu, Zhouhao, 2023. "A multiscale spatial analysis of taxi ridership," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    17. Fangru Wang & Catherine L. Ross, 2019. "New potential for multimodal connection: exploring the relationship between taxi and transit in New York City (NYC)," Transportation, Springer, vol. 46(3), pages 1051-1072, June.
    18. Zhang, Xiaohu & Xu, Yang & Tu, Wei & Ratti, Carlo, 2018. "Do different datasets tell the same story about urban mobility — A comparative study of public transit and taxi usage," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 78-90.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ben-Elia, Eran & Benenson, Itzhak, 2019. "A spatially-explicit method for analyzing the equity of transit commuters' accessibility," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 31-42.
    2. Yu, Lijie & Cui, Mengying, 2023. "How subway network affects transit accessibility and equity: A case study of Xi'an metropolitan area," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    3. Liu, Jianing & Wen, Xiao & Jian, Sisi, 2024. "Toward better equity: Analyzing travel patterns through a neural network approach in mobility-as-a-service," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 110-126.
    4. Lee, Hasik & Park, Ho-Chul & Kho, Seung-Young & Kim, Dong-Kyu, 2019. "Assessing transit competitiveness in Seoul considering actual transit travel times based on smart card data," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    5. Kirtonia, Sajeeb & Sun, Yanshuo, 2022. "Evaluating rail transit's comparative advantages in travel cost and time over taxi with open data in two U.S. cities," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 75-87.
    6. Cui, Mengying & Yu, Lijie & Nie, Shaoyu & Dai, Zhe & Ge, Ying-en & Levinson, David, 2025. "How do access and spatial dependency shape metro passenger flows," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    7. Toger, Marina & Türk, Umut & Östh, John & Kourtit, Karima & Nijkamp, Peter, 2023. "Inequality in leisure mobility: An analysis of activity space segregation spectra in the Stockholm conurbation," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    8. Pereira, Rafael H.M., 2019. "Future accessibility impacts of transport policy scenarios: Equity and sensitivity to travel time thresholds for Bus Rapid Transit expansion in Rio de Janeiro," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 321-332.
    9. Barboza, Matheus H.C. & Giannotti, Mariana & Grigolon, Anna B. & Geurs, Karst T., 2024. "A comparative analysis of leisure accessibility and equity impacts using location-based and space–time accessibility metrics," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    10. Sogbe, Eugene & Susilawati, Susilawati & Pin, Tan Chee, 2024. "First-mile and last-mile externalities: Perspectives from a developing country," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    11. Kębłowski, Wojciech & Dobruszkes, Frédéric & Boussauw, Kobe, 2022. "Moving past sustainable transport studies: Towards a critical perspective on urban transport," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 74-83.
    12. Zhang, Shanqi & Yang, Yu & Zhen, Feng & Lobsang, Tashi & Li, Zhixuan, 2021. "Understanding the travel behaviors and activity patterns of the vulnerable population using smart card data: An activity space-based approach," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    13. Gang Cheng & Leishan Guo & Tao Zhang, 2022. "Spatial Equity Assessment of Bus Travel Behavior for Pilgrimage: Evidence from Lhasa, Tibet, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(17), pages 1-15, August.
    14. Allen, Jeff & Farber, Steven, 2019. "Sizing up transport poverty: A national scale accounting of low-income households suffering from inaccessibility in Canada, and what to do about it," SocArXiv ua2gj, Center for Open Science.
    15. Slovic, Anne Dorothée & Tomasiello, Diego Bogado & Giannotti, Mariana & Andrade, Maria de Fatima & Nardocci, Adelaide C., 2019. "The long road to achieving equity: Job accessibility restrictions and overlapping inequalities in the city of São Paulo," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 181-193.
    16. Frank, Laura & Dirks, Nicolas & Walther, Grit, 2021. "Improving rural accessibility by locating multimodal mobility hubs," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    17. Zhao, Zhiyuan & Yao, Wei & Wu, Sheng & Yang, Xiping & Wu, Qunyong & Fang, Zhixiang, 2023. "Identifying the collaborative scheduling areas between ride-hailing and traditional taxi services based on vehicle trajectory data," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    18. Boisjoly, Geneviève & El-Geneidy, Ahmed M., 2017. "The insider: A planners' perspective on accessibility," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 33-43.
    19. Liao, Yuan, 2021. "Ride-sourcing compared to its public-transit alternative using big trip data," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    20. Zuo, Yufan & Fu, Xiao & Liu, Zhiyuan & Huang, Di, 2021. "Short-term forecasts on individual accessibility in bus system based on neural network model," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jotrge:v:123:y:2025:i:c:s0966692325000018. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-transport-geography .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.