Long, Alfred; (2023) Accessibility and Mobility: Enriching and Transforming Existing Big Datasets for Public Transport Analysis. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

The central contribution of this thesis is to adapt and re-use public transport provider data to develop novel measures of accessibility to, and ridership of, public transport. It does so by benchmarking long term trends in provision and usage and then comparing these with the disruptive effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic and subsequent recovery from it. An initial assessment of provision and access leads to the creation of dynamic accessibility metrics from bus timetables, OpenStreetMap road and footpath data, NHS healthcare facilities locations and other retail locations. The methodology establishes travel times over a broad time window to derive average accessibility over any typical day rather than any specific time slice. The spatial, social and demographic implications of provision are analysed relative to the distribution of services. Individual level Smart Card Transaction records assembled by the English National Concessionary Travel Scheme (ENCTS) are then analysed in an ISO27001 secure data environment. They are used to investigate the mobility patters of eligible elderly or disabled transport users. Transaction data are linked to demographic registration data to examine use of public transport and to compare ridership patterns. Accessibility indices are calculated and compared against observed ridership patterns. Novel application of cohort survival analysis is used to model post-Pandemic recovery in ridership by different types of Scheme users. The results quantify the return to public transport by these groups following the Pandemic and assesses the geographic implications for public transport provision. Potentially disclosive transaction data for the study area are thus used for the first time to address issues of social exclusion and public transport provision for the elderly and disabled. As such, the thesis overcomes ethical issues of potential disclosure to liberate new and novel data resources pertaining to ridership. The results enable better understanding of issues of social equity that are of wide concern to all of the UK’s public transport authorities. The development of methodologies for matching public transport usage datasets to service datasets points towards the opportunities for redesigning data standards to ensure that these datasets can be linked together in future and over long periods of time.

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