Accessibility is concerned with the opportunity available to people to reach activities that are important or if interest to them. This report investigates the relationship between accessibility and travel behaviour. Using data from Tyne and Wear it considers the particular case of accessibility by and use of public transport in a large urban area. It finds that, for one car households, there is no evidence of accessibility by public transport affecting public transport use. For carless households, in contrast, it finds evidence to suggest that overall public transport trip rates could vary due to accessibility by roughly 20 per cent between areas within the same conurbation. The results are not conclusive but they do add weight to the idea that variations in accessibility by public transport between different parts of an urban area may possibly produce significant differences in some aspects of public transport travel behaviour. (Author/publisher)
Abstract