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2022-02-01
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Copyright (c) 2022 Christopher Higgins, Matthew Palm, Amber DeJohn, Luna Xi, James Vaughan, Steven Farber, Michael Widener, Eric Miller
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How to Cite
Calculating place-based transit accessibility: Methods, tools and algorithmic dependence
Christopher Higgins
University of Toronto
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3551-7750
Matthew Palm
University of Toronto
Amber DeJohn
University of Toronto
Luna Xi
University of Toronto
James Vaughan
University of Toronto
Steven Farber
University of Toronto
Michael Widener
University of Toronto
Eric Miller
University of Toronto
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5198/jtlu.2022.2012
Keywords: accessibility, land use, travel behaviour
Abstract
To capture the complex relationships between transportation and land use, researchers and practitioners are increasingly using place-based measures of transportation accessibility to support a broad range of planning goals. This research reviews the state-of-the-art in applied transportation accessibility measurement and performs a comparative evaluation of software tools for calculating accessibility by walking and public transit including ArcGIS Pro, Emme, R5R, and OpenTripPlanner using R and Python, among others. Using a case study of Toronto, we specify both origin-based and regional-scale analysis scenarios and find significant differences in computation time and calculated accessibilities. While the calculated travel time matrices are highly correlated across tools, each tool produces different results for the same origin-destination pair. Comparisons of the estimated accessibilities also reveal evidence of spatial clustering in the ways paths are calculated by some tools relative to others at different locations around the city. With the growing emphasis on accessibility-based planning, analysts should approach the calculation of accessibility with care and recognize the potential for algorithmic dependence in their calculated accessibility results.
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