The impact of opening hours on the equity of individual space–time accessibility (original) (raw)
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The relationship between opening hours and accessibility of public service delivery
In the past two decades urban time policies have been proposed and implemented in many European cities as a complement to traditional spatial planning methods. Such policies seek to provide an answer to the growing number of people facing time problems as a result of an erosion of collective time rhythms and a desynchronisation of different time structures of urban life. Particular emphasis is being placed on the reconciliation of opening hours of public service facilities with the travel and activity patterns of citizens in order to increase individual accessibility to urban services. In spite of the increasing relevance of time policies, only limited quantitative research has been conducted about the relationships between opening hours and accessibility. This paper seeks to extend this line of inquiry by exploring if and to what extent the accessibility of public facilities can be ameliorated by redesigning the timetables of service delivery. A method is proposed to optimise the temporal regime of public service delivery in terms of accessibility. The method is illustrated in a case study of accessibility of government offices within the city of Ghent (Belgium). Our findings suggest that by rescheduling the opening hours of public service facilities individual accessibility to service delivery can be improved significantly. Our study may support urban service deliverers, policymakers and urban planners in assessing timetables for a better 'accessible' service provision.
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.
Accessibility-Based Equity of Public Facilities: a Case Study in Xiamen, China
Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy
China's rapid economic development has led to inequality in terms of property, education, and health. Equal access to basic public facilities has become a key concern of inclusive development policies. However, previous studies have paid little attention to the effects of different travel modes on the accessibility of basic public facilities. The present research fills this gap. Taking Xiamen city as a case study, it explores the degrees of horizontal and vertical equity by examining the accessibility of various basic public facilities, paying attention to different travel modes and travel times. The results for Xiamen city show that disadvantaged groups experience a greater level of inequity. By taking these aspects into account, one is better equipped to identify areas in the city where access to basic public facilities is in need of substantial improvement.
Multimodal accessibility-based equity assessment of urban public facilities distribution
Sustainable Cities and Society, 2019
Considering different transportation modes including private car, public transportation, and walking and assessing accessibility comprehensively and comparatively Comprehensively evaluation of both horizontal and vertical equity of spatial urban facilities distribution Evaluating the impact of future development plans in changes in the accessibility level in different urban areas and the equity impacts of them
Fair accessibility – Operationalizing the distributional effects of policy interventions
Journal of Transport Geography, 2020
A fair distribution of public transport benefits is a commonly stated goal of agencies and operators of public transport. However, it is less complicated and costly to provide accessibility in some parts of cities and their surroundings than in other parts. Densely populated areas, and areas situated closer to the city center therefore often have higher public transport accessibility than remote or sparsely populated areas. Neglecting these realities results with an unrealistic assessment of equity in service provision and hampers their consideration when setting policy goals. In this study, we propose a framework for investigating equity in the distribution of accessibility, where the suggested goal is to provide residents with equal accessibility for equally dense and central areas. For the Stockholm County, we show that accessibility may seem to be distributed horizontally inequitable and vertically regressive. However, once controlling for how dense and close to the city center residents live, while still being horizontally inequitable the distribution of accessibility in Stockholm County is found progressive, i.e., benefiting those with lower incomes. We demonstrate the proposed method for the case of skip-stop train operations and find that it shifts our constructed accessibility measure toward a more horizontally inequitable and vertically progressive state. We conclude that our proposed method can be a potent way for public transport agencies to measure and concretize equity goals and evaluate policy changes.
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).
Accessibility measures from an equity perspective
In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in accessibility measures as a performance indicator of transport systems and, sometimes, of integrated land-use and transport interventions, in both academia and practice. This development is more than the replacement of one performance indicator, typically the level-of-service indicator as used in much of mainstream transport planning, by another. The level-of-service indicator was applied to a transport network or parts thereof. In contrast, accessibility measures inevitably apply to the users of the transport system. They generate insight into the level of accessibility for specific users groups, whether by geographical location, mode availability, income, race, or travel motive (work, leisure, business, freight). As a consequence, the shift towards accessibility measures inevitably, and much more overt than in the case of mainstream transportation planning, directs the attention to the distributive question in transport: who reaps the accessibility benefits from investments in the transport system (Talen and Anselin, 1998)? As the distributive question is highly political, so is the use of accessibility measures. Different measures may result in different distributive patterns and hence point to different policy responses. This does not imply, however, that the choice of an accessibility measure is merely a political issue. Rather, we argue that the choice for a certain accessibility measure should be based on a clear understanding of the responsibility of both government and transport system user for the level of accessibility of that user.
Karel Martens & Aaron Golub (2011) Accessibility measures and equity: a philosophical exploration
In recent years, the attention in transportation planning has shifted from the analysis of congestion to the analysis of accessibility. Among others, this change draws the attention to the classical distributive question in transportation: who reaps the accessibility benefits from investments in the transport system? The answer to this question will in part depend on the accessibility measure that is chosen. Hence, a careful consideration of the accessibility measure(s) to be used in the evaluation of transport policies and projects is of the utmost importance. This paper contributes to this search for sound accessibility measures by delving into the vast literature on social justice. Starting from the classical debate on ‘equality of welfare’ versus ‘equality of resources’, the paper critically reflects on the usefulness of a variety of accessibility measures. This search results in the elimination of a number of widely used measures, which, based on the philosophical arguments presented in the paper, are considered unsuitable as an indicator for the analysis of the distribution of accessibility benefits over population groups or geographical areas.