Page 231 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 6

Impacts of station accessibility and regional heterogeneity on HSR ridership

For the stations close to the CBD, access links had been integrated with THSR before opening.
Taipei and Banciao station are both located within the Taipei metropolitan area and are
integrated nodes in the TR and MRT networks, the MRT network extended the network length
from 74.4km in 2007 to 112.8km in 2012. While Zuoying station was constructed with Xinzuoying
station (TR) at the beginning of the operation, the number of TR services increased from 117
per day to 159 at the end of 2012. On the other side, Taichung HSR station later constructed
pedestrian flyovers to nearby Xinwuri stations (TR) in late 2007. Smaller metropolitan areas
such as Hsinchu and Tainan instead implemented new TR feeder lines (Luijia line and Shalun
line) to its HSR station in 2010 and 2011. These improvements induced THSR ridership demand
as well as reduced HSR station access/egress by private vehicles from 59.5% in 2008 to 51.5% in
2010 (Su et al., 2012). Furthermore, Taoyuan has an MRT project that connects to its CBD, THSR
station, and Taoyuan International Airport was opened in 2017. Based on the aforementioned
effort improved by THSR, the impact of intraregional accessibility to THSR station ridership
need to be further examined. (See Figure 1)

Figure 1 .THSR monthly ridership and opening time of access transport to the station

As representing , three types of parameters were considered to THSR station location in terms
of accessibility measurement: a) direct distance away from its corresponding downtown b)
access mode via road infrastructure such as bus service (BRT, shuttle bus), and c) access mode
via rail service (MRT, TR). First one is measured by distance from city center to the station as
shortest path (km). Here we assumed that shorter distances represent better accessibility. For
the other two variables, the access link could be considered as binary dummy variable, i.e. if
bus/rail is connected to the station 1, or not 0. This is one of the limitations of this paper have
been that access link measures for all THSR station are complex and may result in difficulty of
comparing their impact across different stations. These two dummy variables also indicate the
specific month when access links connected to THSR stations as panel data which has a double
subscript, region i and time t.

3.2 Variables for Region Heterogeneity

Based on previous studies, parameters that significantly influence aggregated THSR ridership
had been specified as found by Li and Schmöcker (2014). Taipei is the capital and largest city of

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