Published: March 2013 | Category: Sustainable land transport , Research programme , Research & reports | Audience: General
This research considers land use and transport accessibility drawing on international practice from the UK, Europe, USA and Australia. An objective of the research was to define accessibility and propose a methodology for how accessibility could be measured and quantified in New Zealand, both at a neighbourhood or a wider area such as a suburb, city or region.
The result of the research was an understanding of other countries’ experiences developing and setting accessibility policy and the success of those approaches. This is important because if New Zealand chooses to set explicit accessibility policy, the research explains how that might be best achieved.
A second result of the research was the development of a new methodology for calculating accessibility that draws on overseas and improved practice. The new methodology quantitatively measures accessibility taking into consideration different modes of travel (walk, cycle, private motor vehicle etc), travel behaviour (ideally using logistic decay functions), destinations (origin or destination based), activities (consumed or supplied) and multiple opportunities (saturations). The calculation methodology was piloted on Christchurch (a city of some 350,000 people) and the accessibility of every household quantified to a variety of destinations including doctors, supermarkets and schools.
Keywords: accessibility, cycling, GIS, indicators, journey planning, methodology, modelling, networks, New Zealand, public transport, transport, walking
