Development of a GIS-based composite public transport accessibility index

Abstract

The increasing interest in sustainable modes of transport such as public transport has triggered the need for evaluation of accessibility to and from the transit service. Accessibility to the transit service determines the service attractiveness and hence better accessibility increases the demand. Although accessibility has been the focus of research in the past few decades, it still remains a concept that has been poorly defined and hence finding a theoretically good and operationally sound measure of accessibility is a challenging task. The objective of this paper is to develop a composite public transport accessibility index using Geographic Information System (GIS) as a case study of an Indian city, Trivandrum. This concept is a spatio-temporal GIS-based public transport accessibility model which includes travel modes of walking and bus transit, travel impedance and service coverage of the transit network. The methodology used in the study is based on the factor that the index should measure the accessibility which comes from proximity to bus stops and land use destinations and the proportion of the population served. © 2019 Journal of Urban and Environmental Engineering (JUEE). All rights reserved.