Introduction:
Romania’s 22 metropolitan areas exhibit significant disparities in commuting behaviors, shaped by uneven urban development, infrastructure investment, and transit accessibility. As the country seeks to align with the European Union's sustainable mobility goals, understanding how railway station development influences commuting patterns is critical for informed metropolitan planning.

Methods:
This original research integrates Geographic Information System (GIS) spatial analysis with a structured social survey conducted across all 22 Romanian metropolitan regions. GIS tools were employed to map the spatial distribution of railway stations, commuting corridors, and urban expansion from 2006 to 2021. Accessibility analyses modeled travel times to city centers by car and rail. Concurrently, the author conducted a stratified survey that captured commuter behaviors, modal preferences, and perceptions of station quality and transit integration.

Results:
Findings reveal stark regional disparities in modal split, with private car usage exceeding 80% in most metros, while rail accounts for less than 5% of daily commutes. Regions such as Bucharest-Ilfov and Cluj-Napoca, which have initiated metropolitan rail projects, demonstrate higher accessibility indices and emerging transit-oriented development (TOD) patterns. In contrast, smaller metros remain car-dependent, with limited rail integration and sprawling suburban growth. Survey data indicate that travel time, reliability, and station amenities significantly influence mode choice.

Conclusions:
The study underscores the critical role of integrated railway station development in shaping sustainable commuting patterns and spatial structure within metropolitan regions. Effective outcomes depend on the alignment of transport investments with land-use planning, institutional coordination across jurisdictions, and the implementation of multimodal accessibility strategies. The findings support a paradigm shift in Romanian metropolitan planning toward polycentric development models, where railway nodes function as catalysts for compact, mixed-use urban growth. This research contributes to the broader discourse on sustainable urban mobility by providing empirical evidence from a post-socialist context undergoing rapid metropolitan transformation.