Exploring the impacts of land use by service coverage and station-level accessibility on rail transit ridership

•We model spatial regressions to examine the determinant factors of rail transit ridership.•Rail transit service coverage of 500m gives the best fit for estimating rail transit ridership levels.•Development density is positively associated with rail transit ridership within 750m service coverage.•Land use diversity does not show a significant association with rail transit ridership.•Station-level accessibility measures are the most important factors for promoting rail transit ridership. In this study, we employ spatial regression analysis to empirically investigate the impacts of land use, rail service coverage, and rail station accessibility on rail transit ridership in the city of Seoul and the surrounding metropolitan region. Our analyses suggest that a rail transit service coverage boundary of 500m provides the best fit for estimating rail transit ridership levels. With regard to land use, our results confirm that density is positively related to rail transit ridership within a 750m radius of each station. In contrast, land use diversity is not associated with rail transit ridership. We also found that station-level accessibility is as important as land use for explaining rail transit ridership levels. Finally, we conclude that development density and station-level accessibility measures such as the number of station entrances or exits and the number of bus routes at the station are the most important and consistent factors for promoting rail transit ridership.