Planning for sustainable accessibility: Developing tools to aid discussion and decision-making

Planning policy goals now emphasise the need to plan for accessibility and it is clear that increasing the mode share of public transport is a key requirement. One of the enduring issues has been how to embed these policy aspirations into mainstream planning practice. There is considerable diversity of approach to measuring accessibility with no single perfect accessibility measure. Applications of accessibility tools in planning practice have tended to be single issue focussed. There remains a gap in accessibility tool development capable of providing a multi-focus perspective both on land use and transport integration, which also consider accessibility as a city wide application where access from every centre to every other centre is considered. In addition to these shortcomings, there is also a strong need for accessibility tools that can enhance the understanding of land use transport integration, not only for professional practitioners but for a wider range of stakeholders. To achieve this, the inputs and outputs of accessibility tools need to be communicated in an ‘accessible’ way too.This paper demonstrates the application of a new accessibility planning tool and the way in which it has functioned as a trans-disciplinary communication tool to demonstrate the integration between land use and transport in a way that practitioners and stakeholders can fully understand. We show that it is critical to apply several measures in combination in order to present the necessary information to inform debate and deliberation. The most important driver, however, will be to apply measures framed around the way individuals make decisions in their travel plans—particularly in choosing between car and public transport. We argue that the dissemination of accessibility measures through visually well-represented media can significantly enhance understanding, making a contribution towards a productive discourse on future directions for urban form and mobility.

Research highlights▶ How to turn the policy aspiration of planning for accessibility by public transport into mainstream planning practice. ▶ A review of the different accessibility measures. ▶ Visual mapping is a powerful means of in driving home the concept of ‘land use transport integration’. ▶ Accessibility tools can be employed in a more inclusive way than conventional transport modelling tools providing opportunities for debate in plain and accessible language, assisting in lay person understanding and confidence in the outputs. ▶ Develops an understanding of accessibility ‘benchmarks’ to enable cities to be compared.