What about the people? Developing measures of perceived accessibility from case studies in Germany and the UK

Abstract

As a primary objective in transport planning urban neighbourhood accessibility plays an essential role in the sustainable transformation of cities and their infrastructure. In most studies, accessibility is objectively measured using aggregate travel time or generalised costs as an indicator of the separation of people from places. However, this approach does not reflect perceptions of residents, which ultimately shape mobility decisions and represent the “lived reality” of accessibility. This paper addresses this research gap, adding to a growing evidence base on understanding the relationship between perceived and objective measures of accessibility, and discusses opportunities for incorporating perceptions into measures of accessibility. We offer suggestions for how and why individual perceptions of accessibility differ from objective measures using data from Germany and the UK.