Assessing the accessibility of activity centres and their prioritisation: a case study for Perth Metropolitan Area

Md Moniruzzaman,Doina Olaru,Sharon Biermann

doi:10.1080/21650020.2017.1295817

Md Moniruzzaman, Doina Olaru + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1080/21650020.2017.1295817

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Abstract

The primary objective of this study was to ascertain, through analysis of accessibility and development potential, which activity centres should be prioritised to support decentralisation of jobs, encourage better integration of transport and land use and ultimately aid the evaluation of a more compact, consolidation and connected city. In doing so, this study evaluated and compared the existing accessibility of different geographic units across the city, including the 34 activity centres identified by the Government of Australia, by the two most frequently use transport modes, namely – public transport and car. The analysis of this study has two parts. Firstly, an isochrone-based measure of accessibility was used for an accessibility modelling across the Perth Metropolitan Area in Western Australia. Secondly, using six node-place based indicators, this paper also endeavoured to prioritise the geographic units that are already better served by public transport, as indicated by the accessibility analysis. Multi-criteria weighed scoring method was applied to calculate a score out of 100 for each of the geographic units. The results of this analysis could help to identify activity centre(s) and other areas in Perth, if any, with higher potentials of being a Transit Oriented Development (TOD) supportive activity centre.

Highlights

The concept of accessibility has been around for long in the transport research arena and has been used in a broad variety of applications, including access to health care services (Cimaroli, Páez, Newbold, & Heddle, 2012; Horner & Mascarenhas, 2007), social exclusion (Bocarejo & Oviedo, 2012; Preston & Raje, 2007; Scott & Horner, 2008) and food deserts (Bertrand, Therien, & Cloutier, 2008; Páez, Mercado, Farber, Morency, & Roorda, 2010b)
Instead of arbitrarily assuming a threshold, such as 30 min by car or public transport, we investigated the average time commuters spent in their travel to work by different modes of transport using the latest available travel survey data in the city – the Perth and Regions Travel Survey (PARTS) 2007
The objective of this accessibility study was to determine how accessible the activity centres across the Perth Metropolitan Area are by both public transport and car, and to identify which activity centres should be prioritised for development as employment centres in decentralising jobs

Summary

Introduction

The concept of accessibility has been around for long in the transport research arena and has been used in a broad variety of applications, including access to health care services (Cimaroli, Páez, Newbold, & Heddle, 2012; Horner & Mascarenhas, 2007), social exclusion (Bocarejo & Oviedo, 2012; Preston & Raje, 2007; Scott & Horner, 2008) and food deserts (Bertrand, Therien, & Cloutier, 2008; Páez, Mercado, Farber, Morency, & Roorda, 2010b) The concept gained such popularity due to the fact that it provides a consolidated measure of the interrelation between land use and transport systems (Cascetta, Cartenì, & Montanino, 2016; Dong, Ben-Akiva, Bowman, & Walker, 2006; Morris, Dumble, & Wigan, 1979; Wang, Monzon, & Ciommo, 2015). In many cases around the world, measures of accessibility became an important tool in developing policies for urban and regional planning (Páez, Scott, & Morency, 2012) and, is being used as a fundamental basis for dialogue between transport authorities and actors in the supply of transport services that would eventually improve the accessibility through the development of transport networks (Cascetta et al, 2016; Halden, 2002; Wang et al, 2015)

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