Territorial Accessibility Analysis as a Key Variable for Diagnosis of Urban Mobility: A Case Study Manizales (Colombia)

Abstract

Convenience analysis methodologies are employed in this article in order to assess territorial urban mobility. This paper is based on data collected over a period of time more than a year utilizing GPS devices. More than 18 million readings were collected corresponding to operational characteristics of car, taxi, motorcycle, truck and different modalities of public transport (UPT). The proposed methodology was applied through the mobility plan of the city of Manizales (Colombia) during the year of 2011. Manizales is a medium sized city with approximately 360.000 inhabitants, located in the central range of the Colombian mountains The average operating speed on each street network arc is the primary analysis variable; Geostatistical techniques are applied to predict the average travel time of each transportation mode . The results obtained are shown graphically and correspond to current city mobility data in a manner permitting comparison between transportation modes. It is concluded that the taxi mode of transportation with respect to accessibility provides better accessibility followed in corresponding order by motorcycle, car, truck and finally UPT; it has been determined that UPT provides the worst global accessibility media conditions; however, the UPT is the mode of transport most frequently used by the population (75% of daily trips).