Transit-oriented development and air quality in Chinese cities: A city-level examination

Authors

Peiqin Gu
Dongxu He
Yulin Chen
P. Christopher Zegras
Yang Jiang

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2018

Subject Area

land use - impacts, land use - transit oriented development, mode - bus rapid transit, mode - rail, place - asia, place - urban, technology - emissions

Keywords

Transit-oriented development, Air quality, City level, China

Abstract

In this paper, we aim to see whether transit-oriented development (TOD) in Chinese cities is associated with better air quality. We first identify 37 Chinese cities with existing urban rail transit and/or bus rapid transit (BRT) systems. For each of these cities we generate performance-based TOD indicators – including measures such as urban area coverage, population coverage, street network density and land use mix within station catchment areas – and construct composite TOD indices for each city using those indicators. We also collect daily air quality index (AQI) data from the Ministry of Environmental Protection of China over the entire year 2014 for 152 cities and calculate annual and seasonal average AQIs for each city. Regression models provide some evidence that rail-based TOD is associated with better air quality, after controlling for meteorological, demographic and economic characteristics. BRT-based TOD shows no significant relationship.

Rights

Permission to publish the abstract has been given by Elsevier, copyright remains with them.

Comments

Transportation Research Part D Home Page:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/13619209

Recommended Citation

Gu, P., He, D., Chen, Y., Christopher Zegras, P., & Jiang, Y. (2018). Transit-oriented development and air quality in Chinese cities: A city-level examination. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, Available online 20 March 2018. In Press, Corrected Proof.