Objective assessment of station approach routes: Development and reliability of an audit for walking environments around metro stations in China

Abstract

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd Transit users may achieve the recommended amount of daily physical activity solely by walking to and from transit stations. However, there are few objective assessments of the configuration and quality of walking environments of the station approaching routes in high density built environments. This problem is acute in many developing countries and in China in particular. Twenty-Five Chinese cities have built up 87 urban rail transit lines during last 6 years. These developments have not been generally accompanied by integration of walking environments with the transit stations. In this paper, we develop a 67-item urban rail walking access scan tool to measure the walking environments of access routes to urban rail transit. We explain and justify an original instrumental design and conduct reliability tests. We apply it to stations located in different urban contexts of a medium-high density city of Nanchang, China. Most items demonstrate substantial to perfect level of inter-rater reliability (Kappa or ICC > 0.6; the testing was on 174 station-approaching road segments), and above moderate intra-rater reliability (Kappa or ICC > 0.4; the testing was on 90 segments). Micro-scale environmental data of 756 train-station approaching streets are collected. We offer the instrument as a reliable, practical and easy-to-use tool for urban planner and designer in high density environments to understand and re-engineer the urban design around new transit stations as a means of facilitating the adoption of transit as a preferred active mode of travel.