ABSTRACT
Many authors and advocates have argued over the past decades that the traditional mobility-centered approach to transport planning needs to be replaced with an accessibility-centered approach. But while the interest in accessibility is on the rise, in practice transport (and land use) systems still tend to be evaluated using traditional mobility-centered performance indicators, like the level-of-service criterion or travel time savings. The aim of this chapter is to provide an argument that the assessment of accessibility is not merely an option, but an absolute necessity. The paper starts by distinguishing three, partly overlapping, goals of transport planning: activity participation, economic development, and environmental quality. Subsequently, the interrelationship between accessibility measurement, accessibility indicators, and each of these goals is explored. That exploration leads to the conclusion that the measurement of accessibility is not of intrinsic value if policy makers seek to promote economic development or environmental quality. While accessibility is related to both goals, other performance indicators may be more suitable if decision-makers are interested in advancing either goal. The analysis results in a radically different, and perhaps counter-intuitive, conclusion regarding the goal of activity participation: if decision-makers are interested in the goal of activity participation, it would be fundamentally wrong to measure a transport (and land use) system’s contribution to actual activity participation. The goal of activity participation requires measurement of accessibility, as only by doing so it is possible to account for persons’ constitutive interests in the range of states they can achieve. Hence, the conclusion that accessibility measurement is not merely an option but an absolute necessity, if decision-makers want to take the constitutive interests of persons seriously in the design of transport systems.
