Without a car and overnight stay, can a visit to a regional centre be an unattainable goal in Slovakia?

Abstract

People need to travel for work, education, shopping, recreation, healthcare and other services. Because not everyone owns or uses a personal vehicle for various reasons, pressure is created to organise public transport as a service of the public interest, which is supposed to eliminate the potential transport-related social exclusion of inhabitants from territories with poor transport accessibility. The subject of the study is an analysis of the daily accessibility by public transport of 8 regional (administrative) centres in Slovakia (Bratislava, Trnava, Trenčín, Nitra, Banská Bystrica, Žilina, Košice, Prešov) from all municipalities of their self-governing regions (during working days and Sundays). We pay attention to regional comparisons of the identified spatial extent of disadvantaged areas by public transport and the quantity of the affected population with the potential risk of their social exclusion also due to the existing state of public transport organisation in individual regions.