Accessibility measures: review and applications. Evaluation of accessibility impacts of land-use transportation scenarios, and related social and economic impact

Several activity- and utility-based accessibility measures were computed to analyse job accessibility by car and public transport in the Netherlands for: (1) the (base) year 1995, (2) a Trend, or business-as-usual, scenario, representing the continuation of (restrictive) Dutch land-use policies and historical land-use trends for 1995-2020, (2) a Tolerant scenario, representing a land-use scenario, in which consumers' housing preferences determine land-use developments for 1995-2020.

The scenarios are based on calculations using national land-use models and a national transport model. The main conclusion arising from this study is that the current Dutch practice of evaluating the (infrastructure-based) accessibility impacts of (land-use) transport projects, plans or scenarios can be improved by estimating activity-based accessibility measures, using existing land-use and transport data, and/or models. Activity-based accessibility measures are very well able to analyse accessibility impacts, satisfactorily incorporate the different components of accessibility (i.e. the transport, land-use, temporal and individual components) and serve as a useful tool for analysing social impacts. Utility-based accessibility measures may provide a useful basis for economic evaluations of land-use transport scenarios, but further research is necessary to analyse the added value to existing evaluation methods.