This document discusses using an accessibility tool to analyze public transportation connectivity and economic opportunity in cities. The tool calculates accessibility values based on travel times from different locations to jobs and other opportunities using public transit data. It can help with transportation and land use planning, investment prioritization, and tracking accessibility globally and locally. The document provides examples of analyzing job accessibility from locations in Bangalore at different times and under different transportation scenarios. It also discusses limitations of the tool and opportunities for improvement.

1. ASSESSING THE ECONOMIC
OPPORTUNITY OF A CITY
THROUGH PUBLIC TRANSPORT
CONNECTIVITY
V.SURYA PRAKASH; JAYA DHINDAW; RAJ BHAGAT; DIEGO CANALES
SURYA.PRAKASH@WRI.ORG

2. WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF MASS TRANSPORTATION??
Travel Time Savings
Cost Savings

3. WHAT IS ACCESSIBILITY?
 In urban transportation, ‘accessibility’ refers to the ease
with which an individual can access opportunities (e.g.
employment, health or education services), given the
spatial distribution of the city (land use), the transportation
infrastructure and services available (transportation
supply), the temporal constraints of individuals and
activities, and the individual characteristics of people.
3

4. ACCESSIBILITY

5. ACCESSIBILITY TOOL
 A planning tool to quantitatively assess urban accessibility
 Works on OpenTripPlanner software and its extension ‘Analyst’
 This tool leverages digital, open, and standardized data
 Road Network: OpenStreetMap
 Transit Network: General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS)
 Population
 Opportunities: Jobs, schools, health centers, parks
 The tool then combines the estimated travel times for each of the chosen travel
modes and location data for employment opportunities (or parameters) to calculate
the accessibility value for every point in the city for a given time threshold. 5

6. WHY USE THIS TOOL?
1. Global and Local Tracking Framework
 Planning Indicators
 Benchmarking
 Sustainable Development Goals
2. Transport and Land Use Planning
 Quick and simple modeling tool
 Move towards a data-driven and evidence-based planning
3. Investment Prioritization

7. IMPROVING PLANNING
 For example, you can estimate accessibility to:
 Employment Opportunities
 Schools, Education Centers
 Health Centers
 Entertainment Centers and Green Areas
 Shopping Centers
 As well as the accessibility under different transportation scenarios, for
example:
 Route reorganization
 New infrastructure
 Different levels of service and operations
7

8. DATA SETS
 Transit data:
 Bus routes (on Google Earth/GIS/AutoCAD)
 Bus stops (on Google Earth/GIS/AutoCAD)
 Bus schedules / GPS logs
 Other data:
 Recent population (blockwise/ward wise)
 Jobs (office locations with total employees)
 Schools, hospitals, … (locations with total strength)
8

9. BMTC NETWORK

10. JOBS DISTRIBUTION
 10 lakhs jobs sample used in the tool

11. WARD WISE POPULATION 2011
 Ward population converted into densities on 100
meters grids

12. SINGLE POINT ANALYSIS
 Travel times estimation for
London using public transit
from given point

13. SINGLE POINT ANALYSIS
 Access from Chinnaswamy stadium
after IPL match (9-11pm)

14. ACCESS FROM MAJESTIC
TIME NO OF JOBS
0 – 20 Minutes 1,50,000
20 – 40 Minutes 6,50,000
40 – 60 Minutes 9,50,000
60 – 120 Minutes 9,73,000

15. REGIONAL ANALYSIS
 Accessibility in 60 mins
JOBS POPULATION
0 – 20 % 2,44,661
20 – 40 % 4,68,235
40 – 60 % 9,63,473
60 – 80 % 22,57,396
80 – 97 % 45,09,957

16. REGIONAL ANALYSIS
 Accessibility in 40 mins
JOBS POPULATION
0 – 20 % 34,22,980
20 – 40 % 26,30,673
40 – 60 % 19,02,545
60 – 80 % 4,81,682
80 – 97 % 5,793

17. Accessibility
& Urban
Analytics
ACCESSIBILITY FOR DIFFERENT TYPES OF MODES (60 MINS)
Public transportation Automobile

18. METRO ACCESSIBILITY

19. COMPARISON: EFFECT OF METRO

20. EFFECT OF NEW ROUTE
Singasandra
Begur
Jambu Savari Dinne

21. K-6 ROUTE: SCHEDULE VS ACTUAL (GPS)
TIME SCHEDULE COVERAGE ACTUALLY COVERED
0 - 20 34,617 26,410
20 - 40 2,20,146 1,39,010
40 - 60 5,27,205 3,71,516
60 - 80 7,44,662 6,37,920
80 - 120 12,46,520 10,44,040
JPNagar15thCross
ShanthiNagar
ShivajiNagar
JSD
KalyanNagar

22. Moving Forward
 Tool Improvements
 Affordability: Adding double thresholds for time
and cost of travel
 Quality
 Scale up
 Improving data
 Global Metrics
 Wide-spread utilization as a local
planning tool

23. LIMITATIONS OF THE TOOL
 The tool has certain limits for visualization such as it doesn’t allow modification of colour coding, ranges
etc in the tool as it’s a web based interface. However the data can be downloaded so that the
modifications can be made in a local PC
 Tool requires high bandwidth for functioning as the site is developed based on server side processing
(even though they are placed in clusters)
 Comparisons for more than two scenarios can’t be done in the tool
 User side tweaking of traffic parameters are not possible in the tool and they have to be modified only
with the initial GTFS creation
 The tool is not designed for creating optimal scenarios but it rather evaluates and compares them

24. HANDS ON TOOL