Adding multi-modal travel data can offer additional insights when running an accessibility study. This allows you to create catchment areas through the visual aid of contours showing all of the reachable locations within a time limit from multiple points of origin, using any mode of transport.

As an example, the visualisation below illustrates the differences between driving and public transport catchment areas. The results paint a true reflection of how reliant we are on car use in England to access key services. This data produced by TRACC helps policy decisions to be made as well as proposals for services to be prioritised.

The areas in red show the public transport times on average between 0 and 45 minutes, whilst the blue key represents cycling and amber car. The 2015 and 2017 results showed how journey times have remained higher for public transport in comparison to both walking and cycling.

To determine the average speed on any road and to optimise routes during the different day/time period, our clients have used detailed data from GPS inside vehicles, this speed data can be integrated with the Highways Analyst tool or can be purchased in the pre-defined periods: Peak AM, Peak PM, Off Peak, Evening, Night Time and Weekend.

Basemap separates these products into two, Highways Analyst and Trafficmaster Speeds.

For Mersey Travel, historically they had to manually add road links and GPS speed data individually allowing for errors and many weeks to complete a task that can be done in a few hours with Highways Analyst. The cloud-based solution meant they could remotely export road data in bulk, making their full network visible to effectively plan any future junction developments and plan for bus operations into the city.