| Popis: |
Balancing transport equity in different socio-economic brackets helps to reduce economic disparities within a region. Equity in the distribution of public transport services is becoming a goal and priority of transport authorities. Investigating the equity of public transport services in distinct socio-economic populations is a starting point for further improvement of access by these groups to employment opportunities and urban services. Only few research selected Sydney as a case study, hence the main purpose of this thesis is to map and compare transport quality and equity to the Central Business District (CBD) of Sydney across populations in different socio-economic status brackets. Although there is not a clear and unified concept of transportation equity in existing research, recent studies have focused on the accessibility to certain destinations or services for equity analyses across different social groups. Accessibility can be simply interpreted as the ease to reach a particular destination. Realistic estimation of travel time by different transport modes is critical for accessibility measurements and sound analyses. In many studies, researchers have solely focused on measuring public transport accessibility for equity assessment. However, the relative value of a public transport mode over private car use also influences one’s transport mode choice. Accordingly, this thesis applied the relative accessibility between modes to study the transport equity in Sydney. Although the relative accessibility or modal disparity has been studied before, accurate estimation of travel times for building relative accessibility still presents a challenge. This thesis applied a realistic travel time metric collected through Google Maps Application Programming Interface (API) for more accurate measurements of mode accessibility and disparity. Results indicate that most socially-disadvantaged groups experience a high level of public transport services to CBD, Sydney. However, there still exist 16 regions that require further improvement, where residents have a relatively low level of public transport services available. This study firstly provided practical means of accessibility measurements via realistic multi-transport modes for transport quality and equity analyses to CBD, Sydney. Results are beneficial for understanding the big-picture spatial patterns of transport services to CBD. The results are also expected to support transport authorities to promote the transport-related equity among different socio-economic groups. Furthermore, this study can be easily replicated in other cities. |
