Public Transport Accessibility and Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

Two of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals adopted by all UN countries for 2030 call for the improvement of public transport and transportation equity. High-performance public transport (PT) is the key for sustainable solution of worldwide problems of growing transport demand, pollution and urban congestion. Transport accessibility is an integral measure of the PT Level of Service (LOS) and high accessibility is an ultimate goal of transportation planning and managing.

Today’s methods of PT accessibility assessment stress explicit estimations of the travel time, the last mile problem and LOS for the PT versus other modes. A wide spectrum of measures from aggregated to individual-/activity-based have already been proposed and more are in development. Leave No One Behind, the keynote of Sustainable Development Goals, extends the goal of the PT from providing satisfactory home–job commuting to much greater variety of services for all population groups, including the elderly, children and youth, tourists and people with disabilities. All this should be addressed in accessibility studies. We should enhance accessibility measures and the software, explicitly consider various population groups and, also, go beyond the boundaries of large cities and metropolitan areas and assess public transport accessibility in small towns and villages. In cities, we speak about minutes in travel and idle time, in rural territories it may be hours, with serious economic and social consequences.

Our Special Issue is devoted to the entire spectrum of accessibility problems. The authors are encouraged to present state-of-the-art research and applications focusing on up-to-date methodology, data, and techniques. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Theoretical problems of the PT accessibility
• PT accessibility indicators and measures
• Walking and cycling as a part of PT accessibility studies
• Links between urban development and accessibility
• Future with Transport/Mobility-on-Demand
• Mobility as a Service and Transport as a Service
• Dynamic evaluation of accessibility
• Simulation modelling for accessibility analysis
• Software for PT accessibility assessment
• Accessibility at different levels of spatio-temporal resolution
• Temporal aspects of PT accessibility
• Accessibility for young, senior, and specific groups of travellers
• Accessibility in rural areas
• Volunteered GI for accessibility analysis
• Uncertainty of the PT accessibility measures
• Case studies of accessibility and of the impact of accessibility changes
• Future challenges and opportunities of the accessibility studies

Dr. Jiří Horák
Prof. Itzhak Benenson
Guest Editors

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