The Return of 20-Minute Cities
Throughout 2021 we released a blog series surrounding the 20-minute cities concept where TRACC was used to analyse the accessibility to key destinations and public transport stops for 13 major cities. Join us as we take a trip down memory lane to determine which cities have since improved or dare I say worsened.
As before, each analysis began by sourcing the data. For our UK cities, this was obtained through DataCutter, which provided quick and easy access to the road and pathway network (OS Highways), the public transport network (based on Q3 2024 to match the original data), OS Point of Interest and ONS 2021 Census data. This data was then used in TRACC to determine how many residents lived within a 20 minute range by public transport to each destination and within 400m of a public transport stop. Data for international cities was sourced from open data sources such as OpenStreetMap where government sources were not available.
The Results
Glasgow, Sheffield and the West Midlands showed improvements in accessibility to all of the studied destinations whilst other cities surprisingly showed a decline in accessibility to at least one destination type.
See below to find out how each city performed in 2024 compared to 2021...
There was a little change in Hospital and GP accessibility overall, with an average drop of 0.05% between 2021 and 2024. Despite this we saw that Glasgow showed better access this time round compared to 2021 where London was at the top with Sydney still performing at its lowest across both years.
The majority of the cities showed little change in Supermarket accessibility, with an increase of 1% overall between 2021 and 2024.
Yet again Glasgow proved to have better 20-minute access this year bumping London to close second since our 2021 results. Whereas Belfast remains at the lowest rank.
Primary schools saw an overall improvement of 2.8% on average for the cities analysed, with five of the cities seeing an increase of over 5% between 2021 and 2024. Access to Primary schools showed similar trends to that of Supermarkets with Glasgow in the lead compared to London in 2021 and Belfast ranking the lowest.
Secondary schools were found to be the least accessible of our chosen destinations with an average of 91% of 11-15 year olds being able to access a secondary school within 20 minutes, a 1.6% drop from 2021.
This time round London remains in the top spot whereas Sydney's access to Secondary schools dropped significantly by 15% taking the lowest spot in 2024 compared to Edinburgh in 2021.
All cities experienced an increase in access when it came to their connectivity to public transport stops. In 2021, every city performed rather poorly with Glasgow and Edinburgh at a low of 49.03% and 42.98% respectively. Glasgow managed to turn the tables and is now considered the best ranked city in 2024 for its access to transport stops.
Let’s take a look at each destination type and investigate the stand out cities for each in more detail.
Hospitals and GPs
With an average drop of 0.05% in Hospital and GP accessibility overall, Sheffield managed to go against this trend where an additional 4% of residents were able to access healthcare services. The greatest change was seen along Manchester Road to the west of the centre. This may be due to the introduction of the hourly 257 service along Manchester Road helping residents access GPs along the road as well as Royal Hallamshire Hospital.
Supermarkets
Although Belfast ranks lowest overall for access to supermarkets at 95.2%, I think it's safe to say that it certainly contributed to the overall increase in access that occurred across all the cities. Belfast experienced by far the highest increase in access showing it's a clear winner here in terms of improvement with an additional 9.3% of residents now able to access their local supermarket in 20 minutes or less.
Primary Schools
Glasgow takes the top spot for primary school accessibility with 99.3% of 5 to 9 years olds being able to access a primary school within 20 minutes, this is a 7.1% jump from our last analysis. Primary schools appear to have been a priority for public transport improvements with Liverpool and West Yorkshire Metropolitan Area seeing an 8% and 7.3% jump respectively.
Secondary Schools
Sydney has shown the greatest drop in accessibility by 15%. This change appears to be for a combination of reasons, for this analysis we used data from the NSW Department of Education which included less secondary schools than the dataset previously used. To test the significance of this difference we re-ran our analysis with the current road and public transport network and the previously used school locations. This showed that 6% of 11-15 year olds lost access due to changes in the road network or changes to public transport.
Public Transport Stops
There was an overall increase in accessibility to public transport stops since 2021 by an average of 14.4% where Glasgow and Edinburgh showed the biggest improvement. This may be due to an increase in road network data quality meaning that a larger proportion of roads and paths can be taken into account. Irrespective of the reason I feel access to stops have had a positive impact on Glasgow and its 20-minute access.
Conclusion
This analysis has shown an overall improvement in accessibility over the last 3 years throughout the cities we have analysed. However, it is important to note that there are also clear differences in the level of improvement for different destinations. Overall, hospitals accessibility has suffered whilst access to primary schools has been enhanced.
Since 2021, local authorities within England have acquired funding through Bus Service Improvement Plans (BSIP) and BSIP+. Whilst the amount received by each area varied, this funding has helped to implement improvements such as bus priority as well as helping to support and retain vital services. There have also been changes not considered by this TRACC analysis such as the £2 fares for single bus tickets which has now changed to £3. This fare cap has made getting the bus more attractive and feasible from a financial point of view, particularly for those with lower incomes.
TRACC allows these changes to be analysed both at a wider area level as well as looking into more detail at how specific journeys were made. This kind of analysis can be invaluable when making strategic decisions about changes to the transport network and making improvements which will create the greatest benefit.