What transit service does the periphery need? A case study of Israel’s rural country

Abstract

Rural and peripheral areas with low population density and long travel distances challenge the supply of public transport service. The objective of this paper is to analyze which type of public transport service best fit the periphery and compare alternative services based on a set of quantities and qualitative measures with emphasize on equity considerations. We applied for the first time the Potential Mobility Index (PMI) developed by Martens (2016) to analyze the equity implications of the alternatives. We applied it in a new and unique way with two measures of travel time: in-vehicle travel time and door to door travel time. The research applies the methodology to a case study of Israel’s peripheral cities. Two different alternative services were analyzed: high-speed rail to the Northern and Southern peripheral cities, and a fix schedule regional BRT shuttle service with a timed transfer to rail hubs near the periphery.The accessibility measures show that the rail service to the periphery provides high accessibility, however, the demand analysis suggests that the demand would be low to justify high-speed rail service. The analysis of the in-vehicle time PMI shows an advantage to the high-speed rail alternative, however, the door to door calculation of PMI shows that the BRT service gives better PMI scores to all the peripheral cities that we examined and can be effective in providing a high quality of service to the periphery. The results provide some insights for research and service planning in rural areas and found some generalization to equity aspects in the periphery dilemma.