Building a multimodal network and determining individual accessibility by public transportation

Abstract

The increased availability of transit schedules from web sites or travel planners as well as more disaggregate data has led to a growing interest in creating individual public transportation accessibility measures. However, used extensively, standard GIS software does not have direct capabilities to integrate transit schedules into multimodal networks and measure space–time-based accessibility. This has caused authors to either simplify travel time elements or develop tools to overcome these challenges. In this paper we aim to describe and implement a method that enables integrating time-table data from a travel planner into a multimodal network model using simple SQL (structured query language) programming and standard GIS. The method presented here integrates all parts of travelling by public transportation from individual home addresses to all reachable transit stops within different travel time thresholds. The method is used successfully to create a multimodal travel-time network model of the Capital Region of Denmark comprising bus, train, light rail, metro, and ferry as well as integrating walking or cycling to stops. Here, the individual accessibility is defined as accessibility areas. The accessibility areas are created at morning rush hour for a study population of 29 447 individuals and a few examples of accessibility areas are presented. The results show a big difference in individual public transportation accessibility in the region. In addition, how the transit network is accessed, whether it is at the nearest stop or at all stops within 1 km walking distance or 3 km cycling distance, leads to very different accessibility areas.