The development of an index to quantify mobility options

Abstract

Mobility is indispensable for carrying out activities outside the home, such as working, shopping and education. Due to the spatial distances between the places where people pursue their activities, mobility is a prerequisite for social participation. From the point of view of transport science, the interaction of three elements primarily determine the restrictions on mobility-related participation. These are land use structure, transport infrastructure and services and also the characteristics of the individual, such as means of transport available to them or their abilities. In transport planning, accessibility is used as a common and widespread measure to determine people's participation opportunities. The assessment of accessibility is based on reachable destination opportunities and is accordingly often expressed in terms of travel time to these destination opportunities. Characteristics of the individual are not usually taken into account when assessing accessibility in the context of transport planning. Mobility options are defined as a person's ability to change location and thus include individual characteristics in addition to objective accessibility (based on transport supply and land use structure). This article discusses an index developed to quantify personal mobility options. This index can be used to show the deficits of previous transport planning, which result from exclusively applying objective accessibility. As an example, the index is applied to the town of Ronnenberg in the Hanover region in Germany. The results show that people at risk of poverty, for example, have significantly fewer mobility options than people not at risk of poverty.