It is important to understand the locus of impact of transport investment. This is particularly important when assessing packages of schemes such as local transport strategies, major network changes, forward investment programmes, or the impacts of generic policies such as for fares subsidies or fuel cost changes.
Calculation of accessibility location impacts can help to inform the appraisal in Section 9.4 for the Economic Activity and Location Impacts (EALIs). However to avoid double counting, reporting of results under the accessibility appraisal should be confined to social rather than economic factors.
The choice of sensitive locations will depend on the projects or policies being considered but as a minimum the analysis should compare the impacts on designated areas of deprivation such as Community Planning Partnership (CPP) areas or priority partnership areas.
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Impacts on Places - Prestwick Airport Catchment Area The following maps have been created using TMfS and TELMOS.
Map 1 illustrates how many businesses are within the effective catchment of Prestwick Airport if travelling by car during the inter-peak period for 2005. The distribution of employed people is used as a proxy for business activity as derived from TMfS/TELMoS and according to the following scale: Very low:       0-200 equivalent jobs. Low:              200-500 equivalent jobs Average:         500-1,500 equivalent jobs
High:             Very High:       10,000-30,000 equivalent jobs 'Equivalent Business' is a measure of business activity across Scotland factored according to ease by which it can reach Prestwick Airport (expressed in terms of a journey time deterrence function) from a given location. According to this definition, areas regarded as having high levels of equivalent business in the Airport catchment include the Irvine, Kilmarnock and Ayr coastal areas. Ease of access to the nearby Airport as well as high levels of real business activity will be fundamental drivers attributing to this categorisation. Other notable locations with high levels of real business activity that exhibit the characteristic of enjoying good access to the Motorway network include Central Glasgow, Grangemouth/Falkirk, Livingston, and West Edinburgh. Zone 217 was chosen as an example to illustrate changes in the provision of employment. When zone 217 (Livingston), near the M8, is factored by the journey deterrence function there is a decline in accessibility to jobs within the Prestwick Airport catchment from ~11,000 to ~5,000.
Map 2 shows the geographical distribution of equivalent business activity excluded from the Prestwick Airport catchment. This is the difference between real business activity and the equivalent business activity shown in map 1. For the Livingston zone 217, this shows a level of business 'exclusion' equivalent to ~6,000 employed people ('High'). The journey deterrence technique provides a useful measure for highlighting where the greatest potential for improving business access to key hubs lies. This in turn helps to direct where transport interventions can provide the greatest benefits to business thereby improving Scotland's economic performance. |
Weighting accessibility measures by the affected population is often needed where modal shift is anticipated. For example, when looking at the impacts of road charging, accessibility analysis can identify the accessibility disbenefits for car available households in each location from paying the charge. This can be compared with the accessibility benefits for all households from the associated public transport investment package, funded by the road charging revenue. By looking at the impacts on people rather than modes, this process can be used to identify whether or not all locations are being treated fairly in the design of the charging scheme and associated public transport investment.
The results of the social location impacts can be presented on maps, graphs or as composite indices for different categories of location, as illustrated by the example above.
