A METHOD FOR QUANTITATIVE EVALUATION OF URBAN PEDESTRIANS ACCESSIBILITY BY PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Abstract

In recent decades, many cities in the world have started to apply policies and development projects that aim to increase their citizens' convenience of life, which is considered one of the most basic criteria to a high quality living environment. The most obvious example is building subway, monorail, Light Rail Transit (LRT) as well as Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems to reduce inner city travel time, thus, enhance public transport convenience and quality of life. Especially, for an aging population country like Japan, the switch from using private transport to public transport is necessary in order to adapt to the current rapid change of its population's density and social structure.  Actual urban public transport planning needs to select transport means that not only have appropriate speed and level of punctuality but also are compatible with the scale, structure and the demand of each city's population. Among the above requirements, everyday travel time is one of the most significant criteria to evaluate quality of life. Apart from travel speed and density of public transport terminals, walking time between home and stations crucially affects total travel time within urban areas. Because each person's commuting ability depends on age and physical ability, the sphere of walking should be carefully considered in public traffic transport network planning in order to enhance the living convenience. This research focuses on walkability and accessibility, aims to evaluate travel quality of each public transport in urban areas by using algorithmic models to analyze travelling time as well as physical and mental consumption index of public transport users. In addition, the study also conducts quantitative analysis on travelling quality in order to evaluate accessibility and applies the developed model to the central area of Utsunomiya City in order to verify the model. The algorithmic model analyzes three basic public transport means in the city, which are bus, BRT and subway systems. The model assumes that the researched urban area is 1200x1200m wide, public transport routes are arranged horizontally in the center of the area, and the walking routes are arranged horizontally and perpendicularly, which means the walking distances are measured by the Manhattan distance metric. The model will calculate total traveling time of pedestrians including walking time and public transports using time. The sphere of travelling is assumed to be among the three distances that are 1200m, 4800m, and 9600m. Using the total travelling time projected by the model, the study calculates total users' travel energy consumption by age. In addition, based on the algorithmic analysis of the central area of Utsunomiya City including JR Utsunomiya station as the centroid, the study analyzes the impact of walkability on people's travelling quality and research further on evaluating how convenient living environment in Utsunomiya city can be by the implementation of the three basic public transportation means. Based on the final result, the study elucidates the impact of station distribution in term of density and distance on users' travelling time. Especially, the study analyzes different levels of travelling quality by public transports between ages based on factors of walking speed, weight and resting metabolic rate. The study gives specific results in convenience level of each public transport means which can be used as a basis for establishing the assessments and selection of most suitable transports in urban planning.