An analysis of accessibility measures for school trip in Hong Kong by using geographic information systems (GIS)

Abstract

Accessibility is an important element in analyzing the efficiency of a transportation system and in its planning process. Previous studies of accessibility had provided their distinctive methods of deriving various accessibility indices for the measurement of accessibility level. However, these were often limited by the lack of generality for applying in different situations and few of them conducted their studies by applying spatial information technology. With the advent of spatial information technology, a more detailed networking analysis covering the entire studying area is made possible. This paper aims at: 1. evaluating past accessibility indices by applying them empirically to selected regions of Hong Kong with the use of geographical information systems; 2. to infer an accessibility index that is more applicable in measuring the school trip in the case of Hong Kong. Selected regions in Hong Kong are taken as examples to demonstrate the connectivity level within a local transport network system. Two regions with different stages of development are selected for this study, namely, Shatin and Tseung Kwan O. It focuses in studying the schooling trip of secondary school students from their living places (origin) to the secondary schools (destination) within the regions they live. This study is conducted in a regional scale in which only the intra-regional trip is taken into consideration. The prerequisite of conducting the study is to select the suitable accessibility indices from the past studies for analysis. In order to facilitate the study, those indices are divided into two types, the gravity-type and the non-gravity type. Only those gravity-type indices we selected for further analysis. By using suitable database and GIS networking software, quantitative variables can be more accurately derived for testing and comparing the applicability of various accessibility indices. Results show that the measures of Ingram and Clark are more applicable in measuring the school trip in the case of Hong Kong. This study provides an alternative method by applying the GIS method in transport study. It shows that it is a more efficient method in handling large amount of data, so a more comprehensive study can be conducted.