An Integrated GIS Approach to Accessibility Analysis

Accessibility is an important element in evaluating existing land‐use patterns and transportation services, predicting travel demands and programming transportation investments in urban transportation planning. This paper presents an integrated GIS approach to accessibility analysis, which provides a general framework for integrated use of GIS, travel impedance measurement tools and accessibility measures to support the accessibility analysis process, including formulating the concept of accessibility, selecting or developing accessibility measures, specifying the accessibility measures, deriving the accessibility values using the selected or developed accessibility measures, and presenting and interpreting the accessibility values. An integrated GIS tool, ACCESS, designed for implementing the integrated approach is also described and illustrated.