The relationship between opening hours and accessibility of public service delivery (original) (raw)
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Professional Geographer, 2002
Although recent studies of individual accessibility have used detailed representations of urban street networks, unrealistic measures of travel time based on assumptions about constant travel speeds through the network were often used. Utilizing constant travel times does not allow for daily congestion and assumes that the effects of congestion are uniform throughout the city and affect all people equally. This research measures individual space-time accessibility in order to show that the incorporation of locally specific travel times within a street network allows a significant increase in the ability to realistically evaluate individual accessibility within cities. The results show that the accessibility of individuals within cities is not homogenous, and neither does access to employment or shopping opportunities vary according to common expectations about urban form and human behavior. Instead, the role of distance in predicting accessibility variations within cities is quite limited. This article also shows that incorporating time into accessibility measures in the form of congestion and business hours leads to additional (and highly spatially uneven) reductions in accessibility, revealing that the temporal dimension is very important to accurately assessing individual accessibility.
The impact of opening hours on the equity of individual space-time accessibility
Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 2011
While many studies have concentrated on the effects of the spatial distribution of services on individual accessibility, only little is known about the ways in which equity of individual accessibility is affected by the temporal organisation of service delivery. This paper seeks to deepen our understanding about the relationship between accessibility, equity and the opening hours of public service facilities on the basis of space–time accessibility measures. Three approaches based on different equity principles are presented to schedule the opening hours of public service facilities: a utilitarian, an egalitarian and a distributive approach. A case study of public libraries in Ghent (Belgium) demonstrates the relevance of these approaches for amending the opening hours of public services to control the equity of accessibility levels across individuals.► The opening hours of services affect the equity individual accessibility. ► Utilitarian, egalitarian and distributive approach to schedule service opening hours. ► Case study on rescheduling opening hours of the public libraries in Ghent (Belgium). ► The distribution of accessibility is strongly influenced by the scheduling procedure. ► Equitable/progressive rescheduling comes at the expense of the accessibility level.
An analysis of day-to-day variations in individual space–time accessibility
Journal of Transport Geography, 2012
Traditional studies about the planning and equality of public service delivery have treated accessibility of services as if it were a static concept of physical proximity. This paper extends and empirically substantiates the conceptual argument for the incorporation of time in measures of accessibility. It does so by examining the variability in person-based accessibility to urban opportunities over a 1-week period. Accessibility is specified on the basis of persons rather than places and measured for each day of the week rather than for a single day. An empirical case of government offices in the city of Ghent (Belgium) is used to demonstrate how space-time accessibility may fluctuate between persons and per person from day to day. The case study provides evidence that, even for fulltime workers on weekdays, considerable day-today variability in the accessibility level of a single person can exist as a consequence of differences in space-time constraints. ugent.be (M. Delafontaine), scottdm@mcmaster.ca (D.M. Scott), philippe.demaeyer@ ugent.be (P. De Maeyer).
Time of Day Dependency of Public Transport Accessibility in the Czech Republic
Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography, 2014
The accessibility evaluation of public transport is based on commuting to work conditions in Czech municipalities. Searching in time schedules are supported by client-server parallel processing. Three indicators are calculated for each municipality, district and region. Their evaluation proves the significant differences between commuting times. It indicates that traditional commuting pattern still persists in time schedules. The analysis of how regional differences in accessibility are changed according to commuting time intervals shows that accessibility for late morning is significantly decreased (compare to early morning) in all districts except of Prague and surrounding districts. The most dramatic drop of accessibility (more than 4 times) is recognised in the central part of the country. The combined evaluation of both-way accessibility for public transport discovers areas with serious restrictions on commuting to afternoon and night work shift using.
Prace Komisji Geografii Komunikacji PTG
The article presents issues related to public transport time accessibility to some selected services, including indoor swimming pools, cinemas, hospitals and shopping centres. In order to measure the above-mentioned accessibility the short distance method was used in the following time periods: 7:00-9:00 am for the hospitals; 5:00-7:00 pm for the shopping centres; 6:00-8:00 pm for the cinemas and 6:00-8:00 pm for the swimming pools. For each time period the measures were taken every 15 minutes. The main purpose of the article is to determine temporal accessibility for various purposes, the number of people living at a certain time distance and the diversity of accessibility by public transport. The public transport accessibility to the selected services indicates areas where the accessibility is limited. Time deviations in the operation of the public transport were calculated for all the selected time periods. The results of both measurements and calculations are presented in graphic form. Moreover, the graph includes the number of Szczecin citizens living in different time accessibility areas and in places with the highest time deviations.
Advances in Spatial Science, 2004
This chapter presents an analysis of transport services in the context of regional transport planning. It proposes to use specially designed accessibility indicators, which allow to really apprehend the quality of the services supplied to different segments of the population and help to assess alternatives solutions. The methodology is applied to the case of Lille as a region capital, and in particular to its main stated objective of enabling people to reach the region capital in less than one hour from the major surrounding urban centres.
Identifying public transport gaps using time-dependent accessibility levels
Journal of Transport Geography, 2015
One of the concerns that has aroused much scholarly attention in transport geography lately is the extent to which public transport provision enables the less privileged population segments, especially those without privately owned motorized vehicles, to participate in activities that are deemed normal within the society they live in. This study contributes to this line of inquiry by proposing a methodology for identifying public transit gaps, a mismatch between the socially driven demand for transit and the supply provided by transit agencies. The methodology draws on the latest accomplishments in the field of modeling time-continuous, schedulebased public transport accessibility. Accessibility levels to key destinations are calculated at regular time intervals, and synoptic metrics of these levels over various peak and off-peak time windows are computed for weekdays and weekends. As a result, a temporally reliable picture of accessibility by public transport is constructed. The obtained index of public transport provision is compared to a public transport needs index based on the spatial distribution of various socio-demographics, in order to highlight spatial mismatches between these two indices. The study area consists of Flanders, which is the northern, Dutch-speaking region of Belgium. The results indicate that mainly suburban areas are characterized by high public transport gaps. Due to the time-variability of public transport frequencies, these gaps differ over time.