This paper reports on the development trajectory of an empirical tool for transit-oriented development planning in Flanders, Belgium. The tool, StationsRadar, draws on a branch of empirical railway station assessment tools that aim to support transit-oriented development planning processes by visualizing the performance of station locations for a range of transport (‘node’) and land use (‘place’) accessibility indicators. At the root of this paper lies the observation that, while the vast majority of reviewed studies highlight the relevance of the developed tools for planning practice, little work is undertaken to systematically verify that claim. Against this backdrop, we invoke an experiential research strategy as recently proposed in the field of planning research; we organize a series of experiential workshops in which we probe the tool’s added value for regional planning in Flanders. In the process, we specifically work towards a qualitative appraisal of tool ‘usability’ and discuss how our findings bear relevance to the well-rehearsed practice of developing empirical transit-oriented development support tools. Additionally, we elaborate on and illustrate the ramifications of our findings in terms of the subsequent/iterative technical revision of the tool. We conclude this paper by putting forward three major usability recommendations pertaining to: interactive and diversified data visualizations, actor-mobilizing momentum in light of data transparency, and the integration of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ data in light of crowdsourcing aspirations. We reflect on the broader technical and methodological challenges that come with implementing these in practice.

本文报告了比利时法兰德斯面向公交发展规划的经验工具的发展轨迹。该工具StationsRadar借鉴了经验性火车站评估工具的一个分支，旨在通过可视化各种运输（“节点”）和土地使用（“地点”）的车站位置表现来支持面向公交的发展规划流程。辅助功能指标。本文的根源在于以下观察结果：尽管绝大多数已审查的研究都突出了已开发的工具在规划实践中的相关性，但很少进行系统地验证该主张的工作。在这种背景下，我们调用了计划研究领域最近提出的一种经验研究策略。我们组织了一系列体验式研讨会，在其中探讨了该工具在法兰德斯地区规划中的附加值。在此过程中，我们专门致力于对工具“可用性”进行定性评估，并讨论我们的发现如何与开发经验丰富的面向公交的经验开发支持工具的实践充分相关。此外，根据工具的后续/迭代技术修订，我们详细阐述并说明了我们的发现所产生的后果。总结本文时，我们提出了三个主要的可用性建议，这些建议涉及：交互和多样化的数据可视化，根据数据透明性的参与者动员势头以及根据众包愿望整合“硬”和“软”数据。