Abstract
Investment in transport infrastructure is the main factor responsible for decreasing origin-destination travel times, which are then implemented into a potential accessibility measure. This measure uses population size as a proxy for a destination’s attractiveness. Thus, changes in population distribution as well as the development of the transport infrastructure are mutually responsible for changes in accessibility. The potential accessibility measure is applied to assess change in accessibility in Poland over a twenty year period of time (1995–2015). During this time Poland has experienced a significant change in population distribution. At the same time, accession to the European Union provided an opportunity to use the structural funds and has resulted in an unprecedented development of the transport infrastructure, in particular the road network. The coexistence of both phenomena provides perfect conditions to investigate the complex interrelationship of both components of accessibility, namely transport and land-use. This leads towards a change in the level of accessibility and its spatial pattern, resulting in a transformation of the level of territorial cohesion. However, the selection of the particular impedance parameters greatly influences the importance assigned to an element of infrastructure or a component of population accessibility. Thus, several impedance functions are applied in order to capture their influence on the balance between the infrastructure and population components of accessibility change.
Highlights
One of the most visible outcomes of transport infrastructure development is an increase in accessibility, facilitating people’s ability to reach desired destinations
We investigated the effects of accessibility change on the level of territorial cohesion
The situation has changed since Poland obtained access to EU funds and a series of investments began related to the EU programming and reporting periods
Summary
One of the most visible outcomes of transport infrastructure development is an increase in accessibility, facilitating people’s ability to reach desired destinations. The role of the land use component is usually under-investigated in the case of those accessibility studies that focus on the evaluation of transport infrastructure development These studies, which aim to evaluate a net effect of transport infrastructure development (e.g. Stelder 2013; Salas-Olmedo et al 2014; Rosik et al 2015), usually apply fixed values in order to describe land use pattern. This approach is straightforward for an assessment of change in accessibility resulting from a particular investment or set of investments (e.g. road network development programmes). Any significant change of these external conditions, like e.g. the depopulation of peripheral regions, the rise or decline of particular urban areas etc., creates new settings and affects both the results of accessibility measurement and the way in which we interpret these results
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