Assessing transport policies for tourist mobility based on accessibility indicators

Abstract

Tourism is a key sector in the national economies, representing a real asset for increasing the competitiveness and the world-wide visibility of a Country. In Italy, the widespread diffusion of the tourist heritage represents a great potential for the economic development but requires efforts to identify sustainable and seamless travel solutions, given the limited resources available for tourist mobility. The Italian National Plan of Tourist Mobility identifies in accessibility one of the key drivers for investment, and to this aim has developed a Planning Support System (PSS) to identify the investments to bridge up the accessibility gap of national tourist sites from the main airports, ports and railway stations (i.e. the “access gates” to the Country), either on the road network or using collective transport services. The PSS is based on the methodology presented in this paper, combining two concepts extensively studied in the literature, i.e. the generalized travel cost and the accessibility, in order to identify where and how to invest either to improve existing mobility services or to build new infrastructure. Given the number of tourist sites scattered over the national territory, the application of the proposed methodology to the Italian case study represents a relevant example of how accessibility measures can be applied in practice to link with policy goals and to identify planning priorities. The application is easily replicable and transferable at regional and local level.