How can we measure spatial accessibility of the territory of Poland?

Abstract

Abstract. Accessibility is widely used term and plays an important role in many scientifi c fi elds. It determines the advantage of one location over the other. Although there are different measures and number of studies on accessibility in the world literature, there are relatively few so far in Poland at the national level. The purpose of this article is to present some results of ongoing research that have been carried out at the IGSO PAS in 2007 and 2008. The projects led to development of methods of calculating time accessibility and the multimodal potential accessibility indicator of the area of Poland. The time accessibility is measured by using the isochronic-based and distance-based accessibility measures. The multimodal potential accessibility indicator is meant to be utilized, for evaluating the possible effects of construction and modernization of the transport network that are envisaged in the EU supported operational programs. The measure may be calculated separately for carriage of goods and passengers, the 16 voivodships (provinces of Poland) and four modes of transport (road, railways, inland waterways and air).

The use of network analysis in the process of delimitation as exemplifi ed by the administrative division of Poland

“…Similar correlations have been defi ned for regions on the basis of migration matrix (Śleszyński, 2011). Also analysis into time and transport accessibility point to clear peripheral areas from which travel time by car to regional capitals exceeds, in some cases, up to 3 hours (Komornicki et al, 2009). On the other hand, there are many arguments concerning hypertrophy and Warsaw, consisting in strong hypertrophy of high-specialized services, especially economic control functions (Lijewski, 2003;Śleszyński, 2007), which adversely affects also the model of functional connections dominated by the capital in the context of regional development and territorial cohesion (Śleszyński, 2008), manifesting itself especially in polarization on the job market and forcing employees to commute long distances (Śleszyński, 2013).…”

Transport accessibility and road network load in Poland when faced with flood hazards

“…While the former are infrastructural, economic, legal-administrative, psychological, and demand-related factors, the latter include physicalgeographical (geological, relief, climate, weather, hydrographic, fauna and flora, etc.) and ecological ones (Mazur 1998, Komornicki 1999, Komornicki et al 2009, Rosik 2012, Wiśniewski 2015, Koziarski 2020. A holistic approach to the determinants of transport efficiency considers land use (spatial component), the transport network (transport component), and the socio-economic traits of the network users (personal component), manifested at a particular point in time (temporal component).…”

“…The large number and complexity of the methods used to calculate (variously perceived) transport accessibility makes it difficult to give a single, most representative example of a paper that illustrates a given research trend. However, they all seem to accept a basic premise, i.e., accessibility is the ability for a correlation to emerge between at least two elements of a set (Komornicki et al 2009) in a given socioeconomic space. In other words, there must be at least two elements, being the origin and destination of accessibility, which are (unilaterally or bilaterally) accessible to each other, and a mode of transport which acts as a medium connecting these points in space and overcomes space decay represented by the various factors decreasing the attractiveness of trip destination(s).…”

A Study of the Efficiency of Regional Railway Services: The Case of Poland

“…Vickerman [1974] indicates that, in economic literature, accessibility is synonymous with minimising travel costs. The developed Intermodal Transport Accessibility Index is determined based on the sum of transport connections between centres and regions, with each connection taking into account both travel time between centres and their significance [Komornicki et al, 2010]. However, it does not take into account the frequency of public transportation services on a particular route.…”