The role of accessibility in urban and transport planning

Book chapter (2016)

Authors

Bert van Wee Transport and Logistics - TPM
Research Group
Transport and Logistics (TPM) (TU Delft)
More Info
expand_more

Published Date

2016

Language

English

Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Faculty

Technology, Policy and Management

Department

Engineering, Systems and Services

Research Group

Transport and Logistics

Abstract

Accessibility is a key concept in transport and urban planning. The key aims of transport policies, not only at the urban level but also at the supra-national (for example, European Union), national and regional level, are to improve accessibility. But what is accessibility? Several policy documents do not specify what they mean by accessibility, but only through specific aims or policy measures does it becomes clear what they mean. For example the policies may aim to reduce congestion on roads. We think it is important to define accessibility, to avoid miscommunication and to make explicit what policies could, or even should, focus on. Above we give the example of congestion, an important topic in many policy plans, and we do not want to argue that reducing congestion is not important, but in this chapter we adopt a broader perspective. Following our previous work we define accessibility as ‘the extent to which land-use and transport systems enable (groups of) individuals to reach activities or destinations by means of a (combination of) transport mode(s)’