Correlation Between Land Use and Metro Rail Ridership in Los Angeles

As oil price continues to grow and traffic jams making daily travel harder than never, public transportation is widely considered a preferred option for major metropolitans worldwide. Los Angeles County, facing the worst congestion in the nation, has several Metro rail extensions on the way. As rail stations are expected to grow, there are a great number of Transit Oriented Development (TOD) projects around the existing and new stations, aiming to increase the transit ridership. There have been various studies on factors that affect ridership. This paper studies the correlation between rail station ridership and land uses around the station in Los Angeles County. We found that different land use around different stations have different results. According to the findings, some suggestions are provided for future research.