Regional travel times to services of general interest in the EU15

Abstract

In the context of debates about (inner-)peripheries, peripheralization and suspended regions, access to service infrastructure and provision is an important aspect that can cause further reduction of the potential of a region. Therefore, it is important to have an indicator for service accessibility that is comparable across different NUTS3 regions regardless of the size or location of the region. In this working paper, we propose to use the population weighted median travel time to the nearest service as indicator. We construct such population weighted median travel times for a number of services of general interest including shops, pharmacies, and schools, based on data from the ESPON PROFECY project. Additionally, we look at how the travel times to different services are correlated with each other at NUTS3 level and how they correlate to population density and to the urban-rural typology of Eurostat.