The effects of urban form on public transportation demand in a developing city

Rapid urban growth in developing cities alters urban form, which directly and indirectly impacts access to public transit. Therefore, to accurately predict future public transit usage in order to achieve a sustainable public transportation system, it is essential to understand how each urban form indicator influences demand. However, most previous research has focused primarily on the Global North or China. Therefore, this study aims to fill that gap by analyzing the effects of urban elements on public transportation demand in a developing city. To do so, after a comprehensive review of relevant studies, effective elements of urban form were identified. Then, using spatial statistical analysis, a database of the urban form and travel characteristics was assembled, and random forest regression was employed to examine the relationship of different urban form indicators with public transit usage. The model achieved a good fit and, using a game-theoretic interpretability technique revealed that most variables had consistent associations with the findings from studies in other parts of the world. However, a few variables exhibited different associations, such as distance to educational land use. Additionally, some variables had opposite associations depending on whether they were at the origin or destination of the trip, such as distance from the city center. Therefore, it is concluded that the impact of each factor on public transportation demand should be evaluated on a case-by-case and an origin–destination basis.