For DUSP’s Quantitative Reasoning core curriculum, I completed a final project which explored the relationship between the uses of land around commuter rail stations and the percent of commuters walking or biking to the station according to data collected by the MBTA in their 2015-2017 MBTA 2015-2017 Systemwide Passenger Survey. Land use data was compiled by Information Station http://www.tstation.info. A join project of Metropolitan Planning Council & Northeastern University 2015. The hypothesis was that more land devoted to parking around commuter rail stations would have a negative impact on the percent of commuters walking or biking to the commuter rail. To explore this hypothesis we used the responses to “Access to first MBTA service” to calculate the percentage of respondents who walked or biked to the station.
Station Area Characteristics
Variables Explored
In this analysis I explored a number of Station Area Characteristics in relation to the percentage of commuters who walked or biked to the station. These variables included the Commuter Rail Zone, Gateway City status, Population Density, Percentage of Land Dedicated to Parking, FAR in the Station Area, Percentage of Land Uses in the Station Area (Commercial, Residential, High Density Residential).
