Assessment of transport accessibility to employment opportunities: a case study of Bhopal

Abstract

Accessibility refers to the ease with which, goods and services, activities and destinations, together called opportunities, can be reached. An accessibility-based transport planning increases the range of addressing transport related problems and their potential solutions. From this perspective, any cost, barrier or risk that impedes people from reaching desired opportunities is effectively addressed. Solutions can include measures for traffic improvements, improvement of road geometries, better mobility, more accessible land uses as well as, mobility substitutes, such as telecommuting or delivery services, etc. Work related trips constitute the majority of trips in most of the major cities in the country and same is the scenario in Bhopal and these trips are heavily dependent on the private modes of transport. The main reason behind the huge number of work related trips and the fact that they are heavily dependent on the private modes of transport, can be the spatial separation of various land-uses, which are difficult to easily access from many locations of the city. So, this thesis focuses on the estimating the transport accessibility of various areas of Bhopal to the available employment opportunities. It presents a method to allow for the assessment of accessibility by different modes of transport. In this, the generalized cost of travel would be used as a parameter to measure transport costs across roadway networks including monetary as well as distance components. This assessment would then be used for showing differing patterns of accessibility across the city by different modes. These patterns would be examined spatially as accessibility to particular activities, which in this case, would be the employment opportunities. Then using this, lesser accessible areas are identified and appropriate recommendations are proposed.