GIS Analysis of Adequate Accessibility to Public Transportation in Metropolitan Areas

Abstract

The public transport system plays an important role in a city as it moves people from one place to another efficiently and economically. The public transport network must be organized in a way that will cover as many places and as much of the population as possible, and support the city’s growth. As one of Australia’s largest capital cities, Melbourne is growing and expanding its metropolitan area to reflect the growth in population and an increased number of activities. To date, little research has been conducted to determine the accessibility and adequacy of public transport taking into consideration the blank spot areas, the number of public transport options for each area, the population density within specific geographical areas, and other issues. In this study, a new measurement model is developed that examines public transport in residential areas and the extent to which it is adequate for the various local government areas (LGAs). An accessibility approach is adopted to evaluate the accessibility of different types of public transportation in residential areas in metropolitan Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The results show that in most LGAs, the number of blank spots will decrease as the population density increases. This indicates that residents in lower-density areas will have less accessibility to public transportation. However, there is no indication that there is a greater level of services (such as more night-time and weekend public transportation services) in the high-density areas. This research is significant as it will point to and help to improve the areas with inadequate public transportation and other issues, taking into consideration their geographical locations and population density.

Comparative GIS Analysis of Public Transport Accessibility in Metropolitan Areas

“…The development of the process flow was inspired from [21]. The first stage is setting up data to make them ready for analysis by loading, cleaning, and preprocessing them in the desired format.…”

“…The tool identified that the outer suburbs and suburbs with lower population densities of London faced accessibility challenges. Alamri et al [21] measured the accessibility and performance of the public transport system of Melbourne, Australia, using the parameter of spatial blank spots, that is, those residential regions where people do not have access to public transport stops. The paper also established the variability of services by different times (daylight hours on weekdays, evenings, nights, weekends, or 24 h) with the area of LGA and its population densities, and established that LGAs with high population densities had better coverage and access to public transport while larger LGAs tended to have a higher share of blank spots.…”

“…The structure of GTFS data for both the cities are very similar, however there exists slight differences in the fields of some files. Figure 7 shows the GTFS structure of Sydney while Figure 4 in Alamri et al [21] shows the GTFS structure of Melbourne.…”

Spatial Analysis and GIS Mapping of Public Parks Adequacy: A Case Study from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

“…For instance, ref. [18] investigated methods used to determine the ease with which the residents in the metropolitan area of Melbourne (Australia) can access public transportation. This involves factors such as distance to public transport stops, travel time using public transport, and regularity of service.…”

“…This distance is usually around 400-800 m. It must be noted that these distances are general guidelines and individual circumstances may vary. Factors such as local climate, topography, and the availability of convenient pedestrian routes can also affect optimal walking distances to parks [17][18][19]. Therefore, in this research, we adopt 500 m as an acceptable walking distance to public parks.…”