Wuhan's Metro Accessibility during COVID-19

Wuhan is central China’s political, economic, and cultural center, with a permanent population of 13,648,900 in 2021. The city is divided into three parts—Wuchang, Hankou, and Hanyang. The confluence of the Yangtze and Han rivers form an urban pattern of two river meetings and three standing towns. Central and urban development areas mainly bound urban space. At the end of 2019, there was an outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan, which led to the metro being blocked for 3 months, severely restricting people’s activities around the metro stations. After the unblocking, public transportation was gradually put into everyday use and the city’s vibrancy slowly recovered. By January 2021, Wuhan had opened and operated nine metro lines with 210 stations (transfer stations were not counted repeatedly). Using previous studies as references [28 (link)], we used an 800 m radius as the distance threshold for 210 MSAs, as shown in Fig. 2.Fig. 2

Study area in Wuhan, China