Investigating the impact of changes in public transport routes in Scotland’s largest city

Abstract

Whether have good accessibility or not is an important measure for an individual’s quality of life. As a widely used mode of travel, the change on bus service can bring great impacts on residents’ accessibility in surrounding areas. In May 2013, First Glasgow Bus Company implemented major changes to the network of bus routes serving the city. It’s necessary to investigate the impact of this change in Glasgow, the largest and most populous city in Scotland.

The main objectives of this study is to explore the impact on the whole study area and in each datazone, and the correlation between the impact and attributes of each datazone.

The accessibility is divides in two aspects, including accessibility of the residents from any origin point to the bus services, and the accessibility of the residents from any origin point to the service facilities. The former is evaluates by two indexes, distance to the nearest stop and number of stops within 714 metres.

The latter is evaluated with whether residents can arrive facilities directly by bus.

The direct accessibility here means taking one bus with no transferring and the walk distance before and after bus travel is no more than 500 metres.

The results shows that the change brought some good impact on the accessibility in Glasgow. The distance and density of bus services got a few better after the change in May 2013. And although there are exceptions in some datazones, it’s getting easier for residents to arrive facilities. No correlation is found between the changes and attributes in each datazone.