Assessment of Disparity in Accessing Railway Stations in Thailand: an Application Geographic Information System Network Analysis

Abstract

Ensuring that people from all regions in a country can easily access railway stations is a crucial objective in the development of transportation and mobility systems and is essential for the convenient travel within the country. Furthermore, accurately assessing accessibility in disadvantaged areas is pivotal in designing and implementing development policies for equitable and sustainable transportation systems. Although various methods and tools are available for measuring accessibility, interpreting local-level data remains challenging. This study was conducted in Thailand, a country with severe accessibility disparities but undergoing considerable development. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate accessibility disparities to analyze accessibility capabilities and inequality of railway stations. The objective of the study was to aid the development of inequality and railway services to cover all areas. The geographic information system methodology with network analysis tools was used to visualize and analyze spatial accessibility data and identify regional disparities. The results of this study indicate inequality in accessing railway services, which revealed that densely populated areas have superior access to railway stations compared with districts with a lower population density. Additionally, over 41% of the study area’s population resides more than half an hour away from access to a railway station. This study highlights regional inequality in accessing railway station services. Furthermore, strategies to alleviate this inequality are presented, and the findings will aid government agencies and railway planners in designing critical strategies or formulating policies for improving accessibility to rail transportation systems and reducing inequality in accessing railway services.

Measurement Model for Determining the Disparity Factors of Intercity Railway Transportation

“…And SP6, "The connectivity pattern of the public transportation system with the rail system in the area affects access to railways." This finding is related to studies indicating that integrating bus transit systems with railways is a significant strategy for reducing disparities in accessing railway transportation [21].…”

“…Figure 2 illustrates that from the structure of the influence pathways of inequality in each dimension, they can be categorized into three groups of factors that influence each other. These are: Root Factors: These include cultural inequality and spatial inequality, which are the initial factors influencing housing insecurity, transportation, education, and perception [21]. Intermediate Factors: These encompass social inequality, political inequality, and knowledge inequality.…”

“…affecting railway employees' job performance [17], factors influencing perceptions of railway safety [18,19], and factors related to weather conditions affecting railway safety [19]. Although previous studies have examined the development of Thailand's rail transportation system, they have primarily focused on enhancing the quality of train services and identifying factors influencing service quality [20], as well as evaluating spatial inequality solely for analyzing accessibility to train stations [21]. However, there is currently a dearth of research on factors impacting inequality in people's utilization of train services across all dimensions.…”

Enhancing Sustainable Railway Station Design in Tropical Climates: Insights from Thailand’s Architectural Theses and Case Studies

“…However, few pieces of literature for designing these in a tropical climate are available. Whereas Theerathitichaipa et al [38] studied railway service accessibility and unveiled a disparity, indicating that regions with higher population density had better access to railway stations in comparison to districts with lower population density. Designing a railway station's architecture in tropical climate conditions requires careful consideration of several factors to ensure the station provides comfortable and functional spaces for passengers and staff.…”

Spatial Distribution and Influencing Factors of Single-Person Households with Social Isolation in Seoul, South Korea

“…In this study, we incorporate employment density (EMP) and four-year university density (UNIV) as indicators of job proximity. Additionally, subway (SUBWAY) and bus stop (BUSSTOP) densities serve as measures of transportation accessibility, as employed in existing studies [46,47]. The subway and bus stop density measures used in our analysis have a similar distribution to the transportation accessibility indexes provided by the Seoul Institute [48], which considers the number of subway lines, the number of subway trips, transit time by mode, and frequency.…”