ACCESSIBILITY OBSERVATORY
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
Executive Summary
Accessibility is the ease and feasibility of reaching valuable destinations. Accessibility can be measured for a wide array of transportation modes, to different types of destinations, and at different times of day. There are a variety of ways to define accessibility, but the number of destinations reachable within a given travel time is the most comprehensible and transparent—as well as the most directly comparable between cities, and other geographic areas. This report focuses on accessibility to jobs by transit. Jobs are the most significant non-home destination, and job accessibility is an important consideration in the attractiveness and usefulness of a place or area. Transit is used for an estimated 5% of commuting trips in the United States nationwide, making it the second most widely used commute mode after driving.
This study estimates the accessibility to jobs by transit and walking for each of the United States’ 11 million census blocks, and analyzes these data in 49 of the 50 largest (by population) metropolitan areas. Travel times by transit are calculated using detailed pedestrian networks and full transit schedules for the 7:00 – 9:00 AM period. The calculations include all components of a transit journey, including “last mile” access and egress walking segments and transfers, and account for minute-by-minute variations in service frequency.
Rankings are determined by a weighted average of accessibility, with a higher weight given to closer, easier to access jobs. Jobs reachable within ten minutes are weighted most heavily, and jobs are given decreasing weights as travel time increases up to 60 minutes. Based on this measure, the 10 metropolitan areas with the greatest accessibility to jobs by transit are:
1. New York
2. San Francisco
3. Chicago
4. Washington
5. Los Angeles
6. Boston
7. Philadelphia
8. Seattle
9. San Jose
10. Denver
Additionally, rankings based on 1-year changes in weighted average accessibility are also provided, comparing the results of Access Across America: Transit 2015 with the results of the 2016 study. The 10 metropolitan areas with the greatest 1-year relative gains in accessibility to jobs by transit are:
1. Cincinnati
2. Orlando
3. Seattle
4. Providence
5. Charlotte
6. Phoenix
7. Riverside
8. Milwaukee
9. Hartford
10. New Orleans
This report presents detailed accessibility values for each metropolitan area, as well as block-level maps that illustrate the spatial patterns of accessibility within each area. A separate publication, Access Across America: Transit 2016 Methodology, describes the data and methodology used in this evaluation.
This analysis uses the same tools and techniques as Access Across America: Transit 2015, and at the same fully national scale; availability of GTFS data has increased in consistency. For these reasons, direct comparisons between transit accessibility results of 2015 and 2016 are possible, and comparisons and time-series analysis are included in these reports going forward.
Introduction
Accessibility is the ease and feasibility of reaching valuable destinations. It combines the simpler metric of mobility with the understanding that travel is driven by a desire to reach destinations. Accessibility can be measured for a wide range of transportation modes, to different types of destinations, and at different times of day. There are a variety of ways to define accessibility, but the number of destinations reachable within a given travel time is the most comprehensible and transparent—as well as the most directly comparable across cities. This report focuses on accessibility to jobs by transit. Jobs are the most significant non-home destination, and economic accessibility is an important consideration in the attractiveness and usefulness of a place or area. Transit is used for an estimated 5% of commuting trips in the United States, making it the second most widely used commute mode after driving. The commute mode share of transit can be higher in individual metropolitan areas: 31% in the New York metropolitan area; 11% in Chicago; 8% in Seattle.
Accessibility is not a new idea. Historically, however, implementations of accessibility evaluation have typically focused on individual cities or metropolitan areas. Recent work has demonstrated the feasibility and value of systematically evaluating accessibility across multiple metropolitan areas by auto, and by transit.
This study estimates the accessibility to jobs by transit and walking for each of the United States’ 11 million census blocks, and analyzes these data in 49 of the 50 largest (by population) metropolitan areas using transit schedules from 2016. The city excluded from comparisons due to lack of available GTFS data is Memphis, TN, which ranks 41st by metropolitan area population. Table 1 lists the included metropolitan areas, ordered by the total employment within each.
Travel times by transit are calculated using detailed pedestrian networks and full transit schedules for the 7:00 – 9:00 AM period. The calculations include all components of a transit journey, including “last mile” access and egress walking segments and transfers, and account for minute-by-minute variations in service frequency.
Section 2 presents the accessibility values for the included metropolitan areas and ranks metropolitan areas by accessibility, as well as by 1-year gains or losses in weighted accessibility between 2016 and 2015. Section 3 discusses these results and their implications, and Section 4 provides data and maps describing patterns of accessibility in individual metropolitan areas. A separate document, Access Across America: Transit 2016 Methodology, describes the data and detailed methodology used in the evaluation.
Download full version (PDF): Access Across America – Transit 2016
About the University of Minnesota Accessibility Observatory
access.umn.edu
The Accessibility Observatory at the University of Minnesota is the nation’s leading resource for the research and application of accessibility-based transportation system evaluation. The Observatory is guided by a threefold mission: 1. To advance the field of transportation system evaluation through research of new data sources and methods for accessibility evaluation; 2. To develop standards and tools to facilitate the use and communication of accessibility-based metrics in transportation planning, engineering, and evaluation; 3. To apply our tools and expertise in support of continual improvements in the planning, design, engineering, and analysis of transportation systems.
Tags: Accessibility, Accessibility Observatory, Public Transportation, Transit Access, University of Minnesota
RSS Feed