Measuring Accessibility to Various ASFs from Public Transit using Spatial Distance Measures in Indian Cities

Abstract

Nowadays, accessibility to facilities is one of the most discussed issues in sustainable urban planning. In the current research, two spatial distance accessibility measures were applied to evaluate the accessibility to amenities, services, and facilities (ASFs) from public transit (PT) by walking distance in six Indian cities. The first stage accounts for distance measures using the Euclidean distance with a new methodical approach derived from the built-up area with a spatial resolution of 30 m from Landsat data, and for the network distance method, the actual road distances using OpenStreetMap (OSM) for different threshold ranges of distances were derived. Meanwhile, in the second stage, indicators such as built-up area, network connectivity, and network density with the percentage of ASFs are evaluated and combined for normalization process for ranking the city. The present study assesses the accessibility to various ASFs from PT at city level and explores whether the actual road network access (by measuring distance) in Indian cities is contributing to a high level of accessibility. It adopts a unique approach using statistical tools while assessing both Euclidean and network distances. It models a framework for overall benchmarking in all six cities by ranking them for their accessibility. The results show various scenarios in terms of the rank of cities, which had been strongly affected by distance metrics (Euclidean vs. network) and thus emphasize the careful use of these measures as supporting tools for planning. This facilitates the identification of the local barriers and problems with network access that affect the actual distance. This unique approach can help policymakers to identify the gaps in PT coverage for reaching ASFs. Furthermore, it helps in crucial implementation by strategic planning that can be achieved using these distance criteria.