Visualizing the Influence of New Public Transport Infrastructure on Travel Times

Abstract

Due to the global climate change and increasing traffic volumes in cities, a shift from individual to public and multimodal transport is aspired. Travel time is one of the most important aspects for many people when choosing their mode of transportation. This leads to the requirement that changes in travel times have to be considered when planning new public transport infrastructure. This research paper presents and compares different techniques for visualizing the impact of new lines in existing public transport networks on travel times. The general approach of simulating timetable data and calculating intermodal travel times considering public transport and walking is being applied to two current infrastructure projects in the city of Bonn and the surrounding region. The created maps generally aim to visualize the spread in travel times between existing and extended transportation networks discretized by different spatial units such as rectangles or postal code areas. In comparison to other common methods which typically require two maps for two different scenarios (e.g. in case of isochrones), our approach gives the opportunity to combine all relevant information within one map. It is also shown how to apply bivariate choropleth maps for displaying travel times and how to visualize improvements in the accessibility of multiple target points of interest at once.