A comparative study on the service coverages of subways and buses

A public transportation improvement project that utilizes Light Rail Transit (LRT) with bus lines as a feeder system is being planned and constructed in Korea instead of high cost subways in suburban areas of metropolitans and medium-sized cities. However, there is difficulty in establishing the Service Coverage (SC) of the LRT because it is a completely new transit mode in Korea. The purpose of this study is to understand the SC characteristics of buses and subways and to provide the basic data and techniques to be used for establishing the SC of the future LRT. Busan City is selected as the study city and the SC's of buses and subways are surveyed simultaneously by the type of station areas to reflect the behavior difference of transit users by the urban space structure. A total of 9 variables for 82 stations are collected and cluster analysis is conducted on the variables. The station areas are divided into CBD (Central Business District), sub-CBD, and regional center based on the analysis. A station in each area is selected as the study station. In the Walking Distance (WD) analysis for each mode, the 80(th) percentile WD of the subway is 672 m and that of the bus is 472 m. In comparing the SC's of both modes by the type of station areas, there are no significant differences between the SC's of sub-CBD and regional center but differences do exist between them and the CBD. Analysis of the relationship between personal attributes and the WD indicate that female subway users have a longer WD than males and apartment residents use the subway more positively than single house residents because of low income and well-ordered walkways. The WD becomes shorter as age increases. For bus users, the WD becomes shorter as riding frequency becomes higher. For both modes, the WD becomes shorter as income becomes higher.