Investigation of the interaction between urban rail ridership and network topology characteristics using temporal lagged and reciprocal effects: A case study of Chengdu, China

•Temporal interaction between a rail station’s importance and ridership was assessed.•Reciprocal effects impact the network connectivity/ridership pressure relationship.•High ridership pressure can restrict the improvement of a station’s connectivity.•Development strategy affects the interaction between network topology and ridership. This study investigates the interaction between the network topology characteristics of the urban rail transit (URT) system in Chengdu, China, and the ridership at the station level between 2013 and 2019. In particular, the relationship between a station’s importance, measured in terms of its ordered betweenness centrality (OBC), and its ridership pressure, measured as the number of high ridership days (HRD) a year, is assessed. Seven covariates for socioeconomic attributes, the availability of other modes, land-use conditions, and number of entrances and exits of rail stations are also included. Four hypotheses are proposed to investigate the temporal lagged and reciprocal effects of OBC and HRD on each other. To assess the temporal lagged effects, the study period is divided into two waves: Wave 1 from 2013 to 2016 and Wave 2 from 2016 to 2019. Four generalized structural equation models are combined with cross-lagged panel models to explore the hypothesized causal relationships. The results indicate that a rail station that experiences high ridership is less likely to be topologically important in later years. In contrast, a station with a higher importance ranking is more likely to experience high ridership pressure in later years; however, this relationship is weakened if the reciprocal effect of ridership pressure on the station’s importance is considered. In addition, the causality of the temporal and reciprocal effects indicates that the URT development strategy may affect the interaction between OBC and HRD. The effects of the covariates on OBC and HRD differ between Wave 1 and Wave 2, suggesting that the influence of these covariates varies with the URT development stage.