Application of Accessibility Measures for Non-Auto Travel Modes

Principal Investigator:

Robert Johns, Director, Center for Transportation Studies

Co-Investigators:

Ahmed El-Geneidy , Former University Researcher, Civil Engineering
Kevin Krizek, Former University Researcher, Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs

Sponsor:

Minnesota Department of Transportation

Status:

Active

Project Summary:

The goal of this research is to develop accessibility measures for the Twin Cities region using non-auto travel modes during the periods of 1995, 2000, and 2005. This will be done in two phases: the first is the generation of detailed accessibility measures; the second is preparing an interface that can be used to query such measures from mapping software on the Internet. This information provides a means for understanding how the transportation system has changed over the past decade in the Twin Cities region. The work in this project relies on research developed in three other projects funded by Mn/DOT (measuring travel time for non-auto modes, generating detailed land use maps, and generation of distance decay functions). The output from these three projects will be used as an input for the this research to generate accessibility measures from every block to every other block containing a desired destination in the Twin Cities region. The gravity-based and cumulative opportunity measures of accessibility will be used as the main measures. After generating the accessibility matrix for every block in the region to every desired land use activity a web-based interface will be generated. The web-based interface will enable the selection of either travel time or accessibility to be displayed. In addition, the users will be asked to choose the mode and the time period in which they would like to generate the desired maps. These maps will be used as a means for educating the public about the various measures of accessibility in the Twin Cities region.

Research Report:

Access to Destinations: Application of Accessibility Measures for Non-Auto Travel Modes
Kevin Krizek, Michael Iacono, Ahmed M. El-Geneidy, Chen-fu Liao, Robert Johns
Report no. Mn/DOT 2009-24, Series: Access to Destinations Study
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