Impact of Transfer Time on Demand for Railway Station Use: Differences by Travel Purpose

Railway stations have relatively low accessibility to users’ final destinations and, as a result, their demand is affected by the transfer time to and from other transportation modes. This paper empirically analyzes the effect of transfer time between bus and railway on demand for railway station use, taking Masan Station as a case study. A regression equation is estimated in search of key factors that determine the use of railway stations for transfer. The regression results indicate that, if the transfer time exceeds 15 minutes, the demand for Masan Station decreases in a statistically significant way. In addition, these results appear more clearly in cases in which Masan Station is used regularly, such as commuting to work or going to school. For non-commuting purposes such as shopping, leisure, or tours, there is no statistically significant change in demand for the use of the station according to transfer time. Therefore, since transfer demand of commuters will be fairly constant, a transfer policy that can reduce the transfer time (for example, a strategy to increase the frequency of operation in order to reduce the arrival interval of city buses or to introduce DRT (Demand Response Transport) to improve railway station accessibility with flexibility in route and time depending on the size and request of users) needs to be considered. Also, when Masan Station is rebuilt as a complex transfer center, it will be necessary for a minimum walking distance between connected transportation modes to be secured to make transfers faster and less inconvenient and for design techniques to be applied to ensure directed connection to city buses and intercity buses.