Connecting the Community – improving accessibility to essential services
| Client | Gloucestershire County Council |
| Date | 05.01.2024 |
Introduction
Gloucestershire County Council have invested £12 million to bring an estimated £120 million of external investment into the county. One of their investment priorities is to connect the county through improved infrastructure, from roads to broadband. The council have used Basemap’s TRACC software for their time travel analysis to quickly and easily produce accurate multimodal travel time contours and reports between any number of origins and destinations.
Gloucestershire County Council needed to identify resident’s access to essential services. such as supermarkets and doctors surgeries finding out how many could access these services within 45 minutes using public transport. By identifying those residents that had no access to services, the council would be able to ensure the communities are connected and improve accessibility. The council also wanted to identify residents without internet access as this would help connect residents living in isolated areas to services.
Analysis
By using TRACC, the council were able to identify communities that were both inside and outside the 45 minute public transport commute as well as those without internet access. Dermot Carr, Research Analyst at Gloucestershire County Council states “TRACC reviewed bus routes to see if they can go via isolated communities to improve access to essential services”.
A customer segmentation tool was used to understand locations within the county that were likely not to have internet access. Dermot added “by using customer segmentation and TRACC we were able to identify communities that were least likely to use the internet and we’ve been able to target residents to promote the internet to access the services that they need, such as applying for Universal Credit”. TRACC was then used to ensure isolated residents had access to their local library using public transport. The council mapped the libraries and associations that provide interest access and promoted their locations to isolated residents.
TRACC is very user friendly, you have got to go through certain stages and they make sense. Systematically working along the tabs makes you feel like you’re in a Microsoft office application.
Dermot Carr
Research Analyst, Gloucestershire County Council
Accessing Essential Services Within 45 Mintues
The council used TRACC to understand how connected communities are
Identify Areas for Improvement
The council used any residents outside of the 45 minute public transport zone to improve access plans