On July 2, while visiting Vancouver, Dr. Jan Scheurer – a Senior Research Fellow at RMIT University, Melbourne and Curtin University, Perth, Australia – presented some of his work on “Public Transport Accessibility in Vancouver and 20 other global cities” to a group of about 30, all with an interest in urbanism and transportation.
Here is the PowerPoint from that presentation: Spatial Network Analysis in Vancouver
Yes, this is for academics and professionals in transit. It is the initial result of an immense amount of data and study collected over the years in 20 different cities. Here’s the academic description:
Background: The Spatial Network Analysis for Multimodal Urban Transport Systems (SNAMUTS) tool was developed to provide standards of measurement
for land use-transport integration and public transport network performance at metropolitan-wide as well as local scales. With support from the Australian Research Council, this work has now been expanded to 21 cities across Australasia, Europe and North America.
We will learn about the first comparative results for Vancouver: does the city stand up to its international reputation as a model for land use-transport integration?
For even a casual observer, however, some of the results are surprising. Like this chart comparing how easy it is to move by transit among ‘nodes of activity’ in Vancouver:
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Astonishingly, we’re between Vienna and Copenhagen. And other comparisons also reveal a remarkable level of performance of the TransLink system compared to other world cities with good transit systems.
Fascinating! I wonder if a similar methodology can be applied to other modes of transport…
These are comparisons of the inner city or the metro areas?
Hi Tim – I can respond to your question as the research leader of this work (funded by an Australian Research Council grant). The analysis is metropolitan wide. The actual area for each city is determined by the accessibility of the supplied public transport network based on a minimum service level of two services per hour in the inter peak period. You can find more details of our work – and publications on our Urbanet web site – http://www.urbanet.curtin.edu.au
Regards
Carey
I can only speak for Amsterdam, but transit isn’t as strong in that city as you would think. Mostly it doesn’t matter as much because the central area, and even some suburban areas I’ve been to, are so easy to walk and bike around. But if you can’t walk or bike, the metro is limited and the trams can be very slow. That said, this is probably just a measure of transit, not overall accessibility, and because of the strength of walking and biking, I would still rank the overall accessibility as excellent.