In this paper a novel approach to assessing rural and urban accessibility on a common scale is presented, reflecting both the ease of access, the existence of an opportunity, the degree of available travel choice, the potential for trip chaining, and the time windows available for undertaking the desired tasks. This approach, referred to as temporal accessibility, is independent of mode of transport and consequently can be applied to multimodal journeys throughout the transport network. This paper is set out according to the following structure: (1) an overview of social exclusion in the context of the county of Surrey, England; (2) assessing accessibility in Surrey - the work undertaken to date as part of Surrey's Local Transport Plan (Section 3); (3) the development of the concept of temporal accessibility and its use in assessing rural and urban accessibility (Section 4); (4) a case study of the application of temporal accessibility to one aspect of rural/urban accessibility in Surrey (Section 5); and (5) summary and conclusions (Section 6).
Abstract