Public Transport Accessibilty in Auckland
TRACC for Universities
Michael Hamerton, a masters student at the University of Auckland, utilised TRACC for his thesis titled 'Determining the Equity of Public Transport Service Distribution and the Subsequent Transport Mode Choice Responsiveness to Supply.' His project required a software tool capable of quickly generating access maps for Auckland's study area.
TRACC, usable anywhere in the world, was the ideal solution for his needs. It allowed him to load public transit data in GTFS format and OpenStreetMap road data and generate a detailed 100m grid across all of Auckland. This process facilitated the generation of a PTAL score every 100 meters throughout the city, yielding thousands of PTAL results.
Getting to Grips with PTAL
The PTAL method, developed by Transport for London in 1992 and formally used in London since the early 2000s, is a well-established way to measure access. A PTAL score is generated by examining a location, in this case, the 100m grid of points. Public transit stops within various distance catchments, based on the mode of transport, are analysed. For instance, it is expected that someone would walk further to catch a train than a bus. From these catchments, all public transport services and their frequencies are assessed to generate a score ranging from 0 to 6b, with higher scores indicating better access. In London, any PTAL score less than 2 is considered poor.
However, PTAL's limitation is that it only shows access to public transport, not the destinations it reaches. Therefore, combining it with TRACC's OD/Arrive by calculations, which can incorporate Points of Interest (POIs), provides a more comprehensive view of access.
What Michael thought?
We asked Michael how he found using TRACC, he responded: -
“It was very easy to use and provided a very fast processing time as well. I was involved in other projects in my consultancy days, and we had the computers running overnight for only the Greenwich Peninsula using ArcGIS. TRACC was running the entirety of Auckland at 100m density in about an hour!”
Did you know that we offer TRACC academic licenses for free? TRACC is widely used by various universities worldwide, assisting students in earning degrees, including bachelors, masters, and doctorates. It provides access to essential resources.
If you want to find out more about TRACC or want it to help you with your thesis then please get in contact.