The benefits of a high-resolution analysis of transit accessibility

Accessibility is an important consideration in sustainable mobility policies, particularly for transit users. Measures suggested in the literature are based on coarse aggregate spatial resolution of traffic analysis zones that is sufficient for managing car travels only. To reflect a human door-to-door travel, transit accessibility demands an explicit view of the location of origin, transit stops and destination, as well as of the temporal fit between transit lines timetable and traveler’s needs. We thus estimate transit accessibility based on mode-specific travel times and corresponding paths, including walking and waiting, at the resolution of individual buildings and stops. Car accessibility is estimated at a high resolution too. A novel representation of transit network as a graph is proposed. This representation includes all modal components of a transit travel – walking, waiting at a stop, transit ride, transfers between lines, thus enabling unified view of a travel, regardless of mode. The use of modern high-performance graph database allows construction of high-resolution accessibility maps for an entire metropolitan area with its 100–200 K buildings. The application is tested and applied in a case study involving the evaluation of the 2011 bus line reform in the city of Tel Aviv. Specifically, we demonstrate that while the reform increased the average accessibility for the entire city the increase was not uniform with different areas of the city experiencing different absolute accessibility by transit and relative accessibility in comparison to car travel. The bus reform did in fact benefit travelers that experienced low relative accessibility, but the benefits are mainly accruing to longer trips. Our approach and computational methods can be employed for directly investigating the impacts of transportation infrastructure investments.     

Estimating the effect of turn penalties and traffic congestion on measuring spatial accessibility to primary health care

Geographic variations in spatial accessibility to public resources, such as health care services, raise important questions about the efficiencies and inequities of the processes that determine where these services are located. Spatial accessibility can be measured many different ways, but many of methods in use today involve some measure of travel cost (in time or distance). In this study we explore a simple methodological question: how much are models of spatial accessibility influenced by the precise metric of travel cost? We address this question by comparing spatial accessibility to primary care physicians for two different methods of calculating travel cost (in time) on a street network: free-flow travel time and congested with turn penalties travel time—which augments free-flow travel times with the burden of traffic congestion and traffic intersection controls. We consider the effect of these two metrics of travel cost on a gravity-based measure of spatial accessibility to primary health care services in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Our results suggest that while travel times between locations of demand and locations of primary care providers greatly differ based on how travel cost is calculated, the gravity-based measure of spatial accessibility provides similar information for both travel cost metrics. Using congested with turn penalties travel time can be an onerous addition to the analysis of spatial accessibility, and is more useful for measuring absolute travel time rather than modeling relative spatial accessibility.     

广州市地铁对常规公交出行成本影响及其空间公平性研究

从时间与费用两个角度研究广州市地铁建设对公共交通可达性的影响及其影响的空间公平性。结果表明:① 加权时间与费用可达性均形成“核心-外围”的空间格局。通地铁后,南部郊区加权时间可达性变化率较大,花都区变化率最低;加权费用可达性高变率地区集中在地铁沿线及边缘地区。② 不乘地铁情境下,CBD等时圈呈同心圆状,80％的居民在50 min以及2元钱花费内能到达最近的商业综合体。乘地铁情境下等时圈沿着地铁网络延伸与扩散,80％的居民在30 min以及5元钱以内能到达最近的商业综合体。③ 无论是否乘坐地铁,出行时间的不公平程度都高于出行费用的不公平程度。番禺区的社区从地铁网络中时间可达性获益最多,最不公平的是白云区的社区,其绝对和相对变化较低;中心城区由于常规公交网络发达,地铁缩短的绝对出行时间较少,而变化率高。地铁对城市内中远距离出行性价比的影响最明显。     

Bringing Time Back In: A Study on the Influence of Travel Time Variations and Facility Opening Hours on Individual Accessibility

Although recent studies of individual accessibility have used detailed representations of urban street networks, unrealistic measures of travel time based on assumptions about constant travel speeds through the network were often used. Utilizing constant travel times does not allow for daily congestion and assumes that the effects of congestion are uniform throughout the city and affect all people equally. This research measures individual space‐time accessibility in order to show that the incorporation of locally specific travel times within a street network allows a significant increase in the ability to realistically evaluate individual accessibility within cities. The results show that the accessibility of individuals within cities is not homogenous, and neither does access to employment or shopping opportunities vary according to common expectations about urban form and human behavior. Instead, the role of distance in predicting accessibility variations within cities is quite limited. This article also shows that incorporating time into accessibility measures in the form of congestion and business hours leads to additional (and highly spatially uneven) reductions in accessibility, revealing that the temporal dimension is very important to accurately assessing individual accessibility.     

Measuring place-based accessibility under travel time uncertainty

Travel time uncertainty has significant impacts on individual activity-travel scheduling, but at present these impacts have not been considered in most accessibility studies. In this paper, an accessibility evaluation framework is proposed for urban areas with uncertain travel times. A reliable space-time service region (RSTR) model is introduced to represent the space-time service region of a facility under travel time uncertainty. Based on the RSTR model, four reliable place-based accessibility measures are proposed to evaluate accessibility to urban services by incorporating the effects of travel time reliability. To demonstrate the applicability of the proposed framework, a case study using large-scale taxi tracking data is carried out. The results of the case study indicate that the proposed accessibility measures can evaluate large-scale place-based accessibility well in urban areas with uncertain travel times. Conventional place-based accessibility indicators ignoring travel time reliability can significantly overestimate the accessibility to urban services.     

Identifying primary public transit corridors using multi-source big transit data

ABSTRACT

Effective public transit planning needs to address realistic travel demands, which can be illustrated by corridors across major residential areas and activity centers. It is vital to identify public transit corridors that contain the most significant transit travel demand patterns. We propose a two-stage approach to discover primary public transit corridors at high spatio-temporal resolutions using massive real-world smart card and bus trajectory data, which manifest rich transit demand patterns over space and time. The first stage was to reconstruct chained trips for individual passengers using multi-source massive public transit data. In the second stage, a shared-flow clustering algorithm was developed to identify public transit corridors based on reconstructed individual transit trips. The proposed approach was evaluated using transit data collected in Shenzhen, China. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed approach is a practical tool for extracting time-varying corridors for many potential applications, such as transit planning and management.     

Bringing Time Back In: A Study on the Influence of Travel Time Variations and Facility Opening Hours on Individual Accessibility

Although recent studies of individual accessibility have used detailed representations of urban street networks, unrealistic measures of travel time based on assumptions about constant travel speeds through the network were often used. Utilizing constant travel times does not allow for daily congestion and assumes that the effects of congestion are uniform throughout the city and affect all people equally. This research measures individual space-time accessibility in order to show that the incorporation of locally specific travel times within a street network allows a significant increase in the ability to realistically evaluate individual accessibility within cities. The results show that the accessibility of individuals within cities is not homogenous, and neither does access to employment or shopping opportunities vary according to common expectations about urban form and human behavior. Instead, the role of distance in predicting accessibility variations within cities is quite limited. This article also shows that incorporating time into accessibility measures in the form of congestion and business hours leads to additional (and highly spatially uneven) reductions in accessibility, revealing that the temporal dimension is very important to accurately assessing individual accessibility.     

社会公平视角下深圳公园绿地可达性研究

公园绿地是城市中重要的绿色基础设施。针对传统可达性分析微观尺度研究不足和交通成本估计失真等问题,以深圳为例,采用公园绿地矢量数据和基于手机SDK（Software Development Kit,软件开发工具包）定位的人口数据作为供需数据源,基于住房分类数据以城中村、保障房、商品房居民划分社会群体,利用改进的高斯两步移动搜寻法计算得到居住小区尺度的公园绿地可达性社会公平情况。研究发现：① 深圳公园绿地可达性存在社会分异：商品房和城中村可达性较好;公租房和安居房社区公园可达性差;人才住房仅对社区公园可达性高;② 驾车可达性最均衡,公共交通方式下不同住房群体间的可达性差异较大。研究补充了中国城市公园绿地可达性社会公平研究的不足,改进了小尺度可达性研究的数据与方法,为公园绿地规划体系提供反思,并可为深圳城市发展提供政策依据。     

Comparing Measures of Accessibility to Urban Supermarkets for Transit and Auto Users

Research on access to healthy foods often emphasizes the spatial proximity of residents to food stores like supermarkets as a way to gauge overall accessibility. Much of the literature has focused on locating the closest facility, assuming that access to one food store is sufficient. Given evidence that access to multiple healthy food stores can improve diets, however, this article examines how closest facility measures differ from cumulative opportunity accessibility measures across space in a medium-sized U.S. city. Differences in access between automobile and transit riders, using realistic travel time costs, are also considered. Results demonstrate that the two types of accessibility measures produce different accessibility geographies and that there are disparities in access for those dependent on transit. These findings indicate that researchers should carefully consider whether access to one supermarket opportunity is enough and pay special attention to the mode residents rely on to access food.     

人类移动性与健康研究中的时间问题

随着地理信息科学的发展,地理学围绕着社会热点问题不断向其他学科交叉渗透,同时学科的交叉也为地理学研究本身注入了热量。空间一直是地理学研究中的基本问题,而时间与空间密不可分,从时间维度研究人类移动性及其丰富内涵具有重要意义。本文在总结人类移动性热点问题的基础上,重点从时间维度探讨了可达性、出行体验与幸福感、人类健康与疾病等问题的研究内容和方法,并从低收入者社区医疗保健可达性研究和阿帕拉契亚乡村地区吸烟者影响因素研究等案例进行详细阐释,最后对人类移动性与健康研究的发展方向进行了展望。     

就医空间可达性分析的两步移动搜索法——以江苏省东海县为例

精确评价医疗设施可达性的空间分异样状况是合理配置医疗资源的前提。本文在回顾国内外关于医疗空间可达性研究的基础上, 采用两步移动搜索法, 以江苏省贫困县--东海县为案例, 以行政村和医院为分析单元, 基于迪卡斯特拉算法计算出各村到医院(卫生院)的最短通行时间, 进而分析各村医疗空间可达性分异情况。采用不用服务时间阈值范围进行空间敏感性分析, 综合研判缺医地区分布特点。与传统的医卫人员和人口比值的方法相比, 两步移动搜索法能有效显示县域范围内医疗可达性的空间分异情况。采用较大的时间阈值, 医疗空间可达性分异较为平滑, 采用较小服务阈值则空间分异显著, 缺医范围也较大。东海县医疗空间可达性整体呈单核结构, 并沿主要交通线延伸, 缺医地区多分布于边缘乡镇。提高边缘乡镇的行政村的甲级卫生院等级和乡村道路等级将会改善边缘乡镇的就医可达性。     

Getting Charlie off the MTA: a multiobjective optimization method to account for cost constraints in public transit accessibility metrics

Most analyses of accessibility by public transit have focused on travel time and not considered the cost of transit fares. It is difficult to include fares in shortest-path algorithms because fares are often path-dependent. When fare policies allow discounted transfers, for example, the fare for a given journey segment depends on characteristics of previous journey segments. Existing methods to characterize tradeoffs between travel time and monetary cost objectives do not scale well to complex networks, or they rely on approximations. Additionally, they often require assumed values of time, which may be problematic for evaluating the equity of service provision. We propose a new method that allows us to find Pareto sets of paths, jointly minimizing fare and travel time. Using a case study in greater Boston, Massachusetts, USA, we test the algorithm’s performance as part of an interactive web application for computing accessibility metrics. Potential extensions for journey planning and route choice models are also discussed.     

基于多交通模式的长春市公园绿地空间可达性研究

城市公园绿地资源空间配置的有效性和公平性对城市规划建设和居民生活具有重要意义.基于百度地图路径规划API及腾讯宜出行大数据,采用集成多种交通模式(步行、公交、驾车)的引力模型与双变量空间自相关分析等方法,综合测度长春市中心城区公园绿地的空间可达性及其供需匹配特征.研究发现:①长春市中心城区的公园绿地空间可达性随出行方式...     

PPGIS approach for defining multimodal travel thresholds: Accessibility of popular recreation environments by the water

It is essential to ensure equal accessibility to services, such as sport and recreation facilities or green and water environments. Differences in accessibility can potentially cause negative health and social welfare implications. Accessibility and service area analyses from the perspective of access equality are typically rather simple. They are often based on arbitrary travel-distance thresholds and made only with a single mode of transport in mind. Thus, they exclude the multidimensional nature of accessibility where individuals' travel behavior and perceived accessibility also play an important role. In this paper, a PPGIS method was used to empirically investigate distances and durations that respondents travel with different modes of transport to access popular water environments. Service area analyses were built on person-based and objectively measured threshold values that not only take into account the spatio-temporal elements of transport networks and a land use component but also recognize the requirements and preferences of individuals and their capacity to access and participate. The results showed that the most common mode of transport to access waters is walking. Generally, the residents travel by foot for 1.7 km to access water environments. Cars were found as the second most common mode of transport used, and most of the popular water environments are accessible by car from every corner of the study area in a given travel threshold time. The results demonstrate the importance of deriving local parameters and the potential of the PPGIS approach for accessibility and service area delineation.     

基于最优供需分配的公共设施空间可达性分析

空间可达性是衡量公共服务设施公平性的重要指标,在医疗、教育、休闲等公共服务的布局规划中得到广泛应用。然而已有设施服务可达性模型难以充分反映服务供需关系,计算指标也缺乏物理意义。本文提出新的最优供需分配的公共设施空间可达性计算方法（OSD）取代现有方法。该方法基于最优供需分配模型,将设施服务分配给需求者,根据分配结果计算空间可达性指标。给定服务设施与需求的空间分布,以最小化旅行成本为目标,顾及设施服务能力,采用经典的运输问题模型确定最优的服务供需分配方案,进而度量服务的空间可达性。以郑州市金水区社区卫生服务为例,求解25个中心与1333个居住小区的最优服务配置。使用最优配置结果确定每个设施的服务范围、每个居住小区使用服务的旅行时间,以及特定时间阈值的服务覆盖比率。与流行的两步移动搜索法相比,新方法的计算指标具有明确的物理意义。本文提出的可达性评价方法无需参数,计算高效,结果易于解释,在公共服务评价及设施布局规划方面具有应用潜力。     

基于改进潜能模型的就医空间可达性度量和缺医地区判断——以江苏省如东县为例

潜能模型广泛应用于就医空间可达性评价,现有模型综合了医疗设施服务能力、居民点人口数量、医疗设施与居民点之间的出行阻抗。在此基础上通过考虑"医疗设施不同等级规模对居民就医选择行为的影响"对模型进行修正。结果表明,改进的潜能模型能够更为合理地评价就医空间可达性,准确揭示居民实际所能获取的医疗资源,结合医疗资源配置相关标准,则能有效判定缺医地区,为政府相关部门规划决策提供依据。     

北京公交就业可达性及其地区和人群差异

运用经济普查、人口普查数据和基于百度地图的公交出行时间数据,分析北京都市区基于公共交通的就业可达性及其在城市不同人群和地区间的差异。结果表明：北京都市区的居民可在60分钟内通过公共交通到达18.3%的都市区工作岗位,这比美国100个最大的都市区的平均就业可达性水平要高,接近于美国纽约都市区的就业可达性水平。同时,由于就业郊区化程度有限和以中心—放射式布局的公交网络,北京都市区内的公交就业可达性存在着巨大的区域差异,中心城区的就业可达性远远高于郊区。此外,人口居住的郊区化程度远远高于就业的郊区化程度,导致北京都市区宏观层面的职住不平衡。随着人口居住郊区化程度的提高,公共交通如何服务居住日益分散的人口,提高就业可达性,是一项巨大的挑战。研究还发现,由于城市中心区的大部分就业为高技术的就业岗位,因此高受教育程度人口能更多地享受目前公共交通系统的便利,而受教育程度低的人口和外来人口公交就业可达性较低。为解决弱势群体所面临的就业可达性的不平等问题,需要更多的规划与政策干预。     

时空约束下的地铁可达性研究：以北京为例

以北京市为例,基于340个站点的时刻表构建地铁组织网络,采用网络分析法和累积机会法,对比在“工作日”和“双休日”“高峰期”和“非高峰期”等时空约束下的可达性动态。研究发现：① 由于起始地空间区位特征及沿线土地利用功能结构的多样性,不同线路的时刻组织模式各异。② 基于运营组织网络的地铁可达性存在时刻上的动态变化,一日内早晚高峰可达性最优,双休日可达性略低于平时。③ 基于运营组织网络的地铁可达性与基于设施网络的可达性存在明显空间差异,且距市中心15~20 km处的站点工作日和双休日的可达性差异最大,与地铁网络结构特征有关。综上,基于时刻组织时空约束下的可达性分析有利于了解地铁系统的精细化管理,并有助于进一步剖析居民出行规律和城市空间结构。     

Gender and Individual Access to Urban Opportunities: A Study Using Space–Time Measures

Conventional accessibility measures based on the notion of locational proximity ignore the role of complex travel behavior and space–time constraints in determining individual accessibility. As these factors are especially significant in women's everyday lives, all conventional accessibility measures suffer from an inherent “gender bias.” This study conceptualizes individual accessibility as space–time feasibility and provides formulations of accessibility measures based on the space–time prism construct. Using a subsample of European Americans from a travel diary data set collected in Franklin County, Ohio, space–time accessibility measures are implemented with a network-based GIS method. Results of the study indicate that women have lower levels of individual access to urban opportunities when compared to men, although there is no difference in the types of opportunities and areas they can reach given their space–time constraints. Further, individual accessibility has no relationship with the length of the commute trip, suggesting that the journey to work may not be an appropriate measure of job access.     

建成环境对北京市郊区居民工作日汽车出行的影响

郊区化导致的汽车出行增加及相关的城市环境与社会问题日益成为城市研究关注的焦点,但目前国内对建成环境与汽车出行行为的研究刚刚起步。基于GPS与活动日志相结合的居民一周活动与出行数据,利用GIS空间分析分别以居住地、工作地和活动空间作为地理背景,分析建成环境对于郊区居民汽车出行距离的影响因素。研究发现,建成环境对工作日汽车出行的影响因地理背景的选择而有不同。整日出行受到工作地和活动空间的影响,工作地与活动空间建设密度增高汽车出行减少,但是居住空间的影响不显著;通勤出行受到居住地、工作地和活动空间的影响,居住地商业密度提高和建设密度降低、工作地和活动空间建设密度提高,汽车出行减少;非工作活动出行也受到居住地、工作地和活动空间的影响,居住地、工作地和活动空间的公交密度低、工作地和活动空间建设密度高,汽车出行少。基于研究结果,本文对地理背景不确定性问题进行了探讨,提出出行行为的研究需要考虑居住地以外其他地理背景的影响,并对控制汽车使用的公共政策提出了建议。