The Crowding Out Effect of Subways on Buses

Abstract

In recent years, humanity's dependence on road traffic has been increasing, and the problems it brings have been growing, especially the issue of traffic congestion on roads, which has become increasingly prominent, and the "big city disease" and other issues have become more apparent. This paper uses the multi-time point difference-in-differences (DID) model to analyze the data of 285 cities in China from 1999 to 2021 and finds that the opening of subways has not significantly affected the passenger flow of buses, indicating that subways have not had a displacement effect on buses. The increase in subway passenger flow is mainly due to the change in residents' travel modes and may have an impact on other modes of transportation such as taxis and private cars. Therefore, for areas not covered by the subway, especially old communities with a large population, it is recommended to strengthen the public transport connection with subway stations and introduce new types of transportation such as micro-buses to improve the convenience of residents' travel. Building an integrated public transport system with rail transit as the backbone and regular buses as the network, where various modes of transportation work in synergy, is an inevitable trend in the development of major global cities and an important way to solve the traffic congestion problems in big cities.