Accessibility, a measure that examines both land use and transportation systems, is the ease of reaching valued destinations. It can be measured for various transportation modes, to different types of destinations, and at different times of day. There are a variety of ways to define accessibility, but the number of destinations reachable within a given travel time is the most comprehensible and transparent, as well as the most directly comparable across cities.
The Access Across America series, begun in 2013, measures accessibility to jobs via various modes of transportation in major metropolitan areas across the United States. Projects in the series are conducted by the Unviersity of Minnesota's Accessibility Observatory with funding from CTS.
Access Across America: Transit 2014
The latest study in the series, Access Across America: Transit 2014, examined the accessibility to jobs by transit in 46 of the 50 largest (by population) metropolitan areas in the United States. It is the most detailed evaluation to date of access to jobs by transit, and it allows for a direct comparison of the transit accessibility performance of America’s largest metropolitan areas.
Rankings were determined by a weighted average of accessibility, giving a higher weight to closer jobs. The calculations include all components of a transit journey, including “last mile” access and egress walking segments and transfers. The study's report presents detailed accessibility values for each metropolitan area, as well as detailed block-level maps that illustrate the spatial patterns of accessibility within each area.
In the future, the data presented in this study will be used to complete additional analyses, published periodically. Upcoming reports in the series will explore more detailed aspects of transit accessibility to jobs, including accessibility of jobs of different wage levels and a comparison with accessibility by car.