01658466

Component

The authors present an agile framework for conducting analyses of employment accessibility by transit in data-poor environments. Improved accessibility enables the benefits of spatial concentration and acts as catalyst for urban economic development. With the rapid growth of cities in the Global South, data-driven planning for accessibility is crucial. However, acquiring accurate information about the spatial distribution of employment is often challenging in these cities. Therefore, the authors propose a framework that produces useful outputs even without employment information, and as better employment data becomes available, the authors incrementally increase the specificity of the analysis. In particular, without any employment information the authors can determine population exposure; with knowledge of the locations of key employment centres the authors can determine employment pools and catchment areas; and finally, with the complete spatial distribution of employment the authors can determine the number of opportunities individuals can access. As such, the approach allows the authors to generate valuable results to support data-driven decision-making for various data availability scenarios. Using Port-au-Prince, Haiti as a case study, the authors evaluate the accessibility impact of speed improvements to four major transit corridors for the different levels of data availability. The authors find that each incremental analysis provides additional insight, however the overall findings across the analyses are similar. This suggests that the proposed framework can be effective for rapid appraisals of accessibility in data-poor environments.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABJ30 Standing Committee on Urban Transportation Data and Information Systems.

18-03303

English

16p

2018

Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; Maps; References; Tables

Accessibility; Case studies; Data collection; Employment; Evaluation and assessment; Improvements; Public transit; Spatial analysis

Port-au-Prince (Haiti)

Data and Information Technology; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2018 Paper #18-03303

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 8 2018 10:48AM