Analyzing Public Transport Network Accessibility

Due to the traffic congestion and public-oriented transportation policies of Seoul, public transportation is receiving attention and being used increasingly. However, current transport routes configuration is showing unbalanced accessibility throughout the city area creating differences in time, expenses and metal burden of users who travel the same distances. One of the reasons is that transport route planning has been partially empirical and non-quantitative tasks due to lack of relevant methods for assessing the complexity of the transport routes. This paper presents a method to compute the connectivity of public transport system based on the topological structure of the network of transport routes. The main methodological issue starts from the fact that the more transfers take place, the deeper the connectivity becomes making that area evaluated as less advantageous as for public transport accessibility. By computing the connectivity of each bus or subway station with all others in a city, we can quantify the differences in the serviceability of city areas based on the public transportation. This paper is based on the topological interpretation of the routes network and suggests an algorithm that can automate the computation process. The process is illustrated using a simple artificial network data built in a GIS.