Bringing Time Back In: A Study on the Influence of Travel Time Variations and Facility Opening Hours on Individual Accessibility

Abstract

Although recent studies of individual accessibility have used detailed representations of urban street networks, unrealistic measures of travel time based on assumptions about constant travel speeds through the network were often used. Utilizing constant travel times does not allow for daily congestion and assumes that the effects of congestion are uniform throughout the city and affect all people equally. This research measures individual space-time accessibility in order to show that the incorporation of locally specific travel times within a street network allows a significant increase in the ability to realistically evaluate individual accessibility within cities. The results show that the accessibility of individuals within cities is not homogenous, and neither does access to employment or shopping opportunities vary according to common expectations about urban form and human behavior. Instead, the role of distance in predicting accessibility variations within cities is quite limited. This article also shows that incorporating time into accessibility measures in the form of congestion and business hours leads to additional (and highly spatially uneven) reductions in accessibility, revealing that the temporal dimension is very important to accurately assessing individual accessibility.

Different destination, different commuting pattern? Analyzing the influence of the campus location on commuting

“…Even for active travel, this influence still holds (Manaugh & El-Geneidy, 2011), as although the home to work distance is the major barrier to active commuting, the workplace is an origin for several other daily trips (Dong, Ma, & Broach, 2015), and its built environment features might impede or encourage the making of these trips by walking or cycling (Adams, Bull, & Foster, 2016). The uncertain geographical context problem (Kwan, 2012) gives further support to the importance of destinations in explaining travel behavior, since spatiotemporal variability is extremely important in understanding the real exposure of an individual throughout the day, not only to air pollution and associated health risks (Park & Kwan, 2017), but also to different space-time accessibility conditions (Miller, 2007;Weber & Kwan, 2002), which might exert a strong influence on mode choice and associated travel behavior.…”

Coexistence and conflicts between shopping malls and street markets in growing cities: Analysis of shoppers’ behaviour

“…The location preferences largely depend on income and housing budget, proximity to good schools and shopping centres ( Chiang and Hsu, 2005 ). Besides the consideration of distance in predicting accessibility to shopping centres and buying behaviour, time is another important factor that determines the shopping behaviour of urban consumers ( Weber and Kwan, 2002 ). Motivations of shopping in the street markets include inside and outside ambience, layout and extent of involvement of vendors in the selling process.…”

The relationship between opening hours and accessibility of public service delivery

“…Within the STAM tradition, at least three studies are important for evaluation of accessibility along the temporal dimension. Weber and Kwan (2002) While previous research has clearly foregrounded the ramifications of opening hours for individual accessibility, no attempt has been made thus far to explore the ways in which opening hours can be amended to achieve a higher accessibility of urban services. In what follows, we will extend accessibility research in this direction.…”

“…In particular, a large number of researchers have shown that individual accessibility is shaped by inter alia an individual's mandatory activity schedule, trip chaining behaviour and transport mode availability (see e.g. Weber and Kwan, 2002;Kim and Kwan, 2003;Kwan and Weber, 2008;Schwanen and De Jong, 2008;Neutens et al, 2010c, b;Neutens et al, 2010d). …”