How to Locate Urban–rural Transit Hubs from the Viewpoint of County Integration?

Chinese new urbanization requires the integration of urban and rural transportation, especially at the county level. Establishing a reliable and practical method to locate urban–rural transit hubs becomes a key issue in transportation planning. To solve the issue that existing methods lack applicability in practices due to the need for costly data collection, this study develops an application-oriented model. First, we generate basic nodes with traffic analysis zones in both urban and rural areas. Second, the node importance evaluation model is established to identify potential hub zones based on socioeconomic and topological factors. Third, we optimize the final hub locations to maximize the served population and urban transit accessibility. To reflect passenger characteristics, accessibility to opportunities is defined in terms of weighted land-use areas within a walking distance. ArcGIS software is applied to improve the efficiency of data processing and to improve the accuracy of the calculated network distances. A case study is conducted in Gaoping, China, to confirm the validity of the proposed approach. The results indicate that the optimal hub locations are effectively aligned with the practical conditions, thus improving travel convenience. The proposed approach has the potential for broader use by transport planners and policymakers in developing people-oriented and integrated urban–rural transit hubs.