The Spanish Government has just designed a new Multimodal Transport Plan for the next 15 years. The evaluation of the new regional equilibrium after the construction of a number of new infrastructure has been carried out through a comprehensive accessibility study. A new accessibility indicator has been developed with multimodal characteristics. There are five elements corresponding to highways, roads, rail, airports and ports. The accessibility of each means of transport has different weight in the aggregate indicator depending on its contribution to the GPD. Accessibility levels in each mode have been determined also by a composed index. The first part is the accessibility to the 35 main economic activity centres. accessibility to the 35 main economic activity centres. The second part of the indicator is related to regional equity. The basic variable is travel time calculated from distance and average speed of each link. This travel time is modified by some factors related to characteristics of the infrastructure, volume and type of traffic and also if the road is passing through urban areas. All the calculations have been drawn using a GIS computer system. The programme operates over a graph with 450 nodes which represents the transport network. The results have presented both by using statistics and by using charts. The accessibility levels for both 1993 and 2007 scenarios are provided. These data provide a useful tool to the planner in the decision making process. (A)
Abstract