Transit Accessibility and Commercial-Opportunity Alignment in an Oasis–Valley City: Evidence from Central Urumqi

Oasis–valley cities can exhibit directionally uneven public transport accessibility in the context of constrained development corridors and dispersed peripheral clusters. However, existing studies rarely explain these directional differences while jointly accounting for heterogeneous commercial facilities, full-process travel costs, and time-specific shopping scenarios. This study asks how public transport accessibility aligns with commercial opportunities in central Urumqi and how the associated factors vary across the core, inner suburbs, and peripheral clusters. We analyzed 105 subdistricts and 16 shopping centers using geographic information system (GIS) analysis, door-to-door transit travel-time isochrones, a cumulative transit service-opportunity index, and geographically weighted regression. Three findings emerged. (1) Transit supply broadly followed population concentration: population density correlated with stop density (r = 0.804) and road-network density (r = 0.780), although localized mismatches persisted. (2) Commercial opportunities formed one primary and three secondary centers; accessibility extended north–south but contracted east–west, and the main peripheral clusters generally required 45–60 min to reach. (3) Local model fit ranged from R2 = 0.26 to 0.55, with accessibility associated mainly with population in the core, population and road networks in inner suburbs, and distance to the core business district in parts of the periphery. These results provide a basis for prioritizing feeder services and cross-cluster connections in central Urumqi.