IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/socinc/v4y2016i3p36-45.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Perceived Accessibility of Public Transport as a Potential Indicator of Social Inclusion

Author

Listed:
  • Katrin Lättman

    (SAMOT/CTF—Service Research Center & Department of Social and Psychological Studies, Karlstad University, Sweden)

  • Margareta Friman

    (SAMOT/CTF—Service Research Center & Department of Social and Psychological Studies, Karlstad University, Sweden)

  • Lars E. Olsson

    (SAMOT/CTF—Service Research Center & Department of Social and Psychological Studies, Karlstad University, Sweden)

Abstract

Perceived accessibility has been acknowledged as an important aspect of transport policy since the 70s. Nevertheless, very few empirical studies have been conducted in this field. When aiming to improve social inclusion, by making sustainable transport modes accessible to all, it is important to understand the factors driving perceived accessibility. Unlike conventional accessibility measures, perceived accessibility focuses on the perceived possibilities and ease of engaging in preferred activities using different transport modes. We define perceived accessibility in terms of how easy it is to live a satisfactory life with the help of the transport system, which is not necessarily the same thing as the objective standard of the system. According to previous research, perceived accessibility varies with the subjectively-rated quality of the mode of transport. Thus, improvements in quality (e.g. trip planning, comfort, or safety) increase the perceived accessibility and make life easier to live using the chosen mode of transport. This study (n=750) focuses on the perceived accessibility of public transport, captured using the Perceived Accessibility Scale PAC (Lättman, Olsson, & Friman, 2015). More specifically, this study aims to determine how level of quality affects the perceived accessibility in public transport. A Conditional Process Model shows that, in addition to quality, feeling safe and frequency of travel are important predictors of perceived accessibility. Furthermore, elderly and those in their thirties report a lower level of perceived accessibility to their day-to-day activities using public transport. The basic premise of this study is that subjective experiences may be as important as objective indicators when planning and designing for socially inclusive transport systems.

Suggested Citation

  • Katrin Lättman & Margareta Friman & Lars E. Olsson, 2016. "Perceived Accessibility of Public Transport as a Potential Indicator of Social Inclusion," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(3), pages 36-45.
  • Handle: RePEc:cog:socinc:v4:y:2016:i:3:p:36-45
    DOI: 10.17645/si.v4i3.481
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/481
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/si.v4i3.481?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Redman, Lauren & Friman, Margareta & Gärling, Tommy & Hartig, Terry, 2013. "Quality attributes of public transport that attract car users: A research review," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 119-127.
    2. Lucas, Karen, 2012. "Transport and social exclusion: Where are we now?," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 105-113.
    3. Sedigheh Lotfi & M. Koohsari, 2009. "Analyzing Accessibility Dimension of Urban Quality of Life: Where Urban Designers Face Duality Between Subjective and Objective Reading of Place," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 94(3), pages 417-435, December.
    4. Lars Olsson & Tommy Gärling & Dick Ettema & Margareta Friman & Satoshi Fujii, 2013. "Happiness and Satisfaction with Work Commute," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 111(1), pages 255-263, March.
    5. Stanley, Janet & Vella-Brodrick, Dianne, 2009. "The usefulness of social exclusion to inform social policy in transport," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 90-96, July.
    6. Stanley, Janet & Stanley, John & Vella-Brodrick, Dianne & Currie, Graham, 2010. "The place of transport in facilitating social inclusion via the mediating influence of social capital," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 280-286.
    7. Kenyon, Susan, 2011. "Transport and social exclusion: access to higher education in the UK policy context," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 763-771.
    8. Banister, David, 2008. "The sustainable mobility paradigm," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 73-80, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Miriam Ricci & Graham Parkhurst & Juliet Jain, 2016. "Transport Policy and Social Inclusion," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(3), pages 1-6.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Katrin Lättman & Margareta Friman & Lars E. Olsson, 2016. "Perceived Accessibility of Public Transport as a Potential Indicator of Social Inclusion," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(3), pages 36-45.
    2. José Renato Barandier & Milena Bodmer & Izabella Lentino, 2017. "Evidence of the impacts of the national housing programme on the accessibility of the low‐income population in Rio de Janeiro," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(2), pages 105-118, May.
    3. Luis A. Guzman & Victor A. Cantillo-Garcia & Julian Arellana & Olga L. Sarmiento, 2023. "User expectations and perceptions towards new public transport infrastructure: evaluating a cable car in Bogotá," Transportation, Springer, vol. 50(3), pages 751-771, June.
    4. Barboza, Matheus H.C. & Carneiro, Mariana S. & Falavigna, Claudio & Luz, Gregório & Orrico, Romulo, 2021. "Balancing time: Using a new accessibility measure in Rio de Janeiro," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    5. Daniel Štraub, 2020. "The Effects of Fare-Free Public Transport: A Lesson from Frýdek-Místek (Czechia)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(21), pages 1-15, November.
    6. Casas, Irene & Delmelle, Elizabeth C., 2014. "Identifying dimensions of exclusion from a BRT system in a developing country: a content analysis approach," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 228-237.
    7. Lättman, Katrin & Olsson, Lars E. & Friman, Margareta, 2018. "A new approach to accessibility – Examining perceived accessibility in contrast to objectively measured accessibility in daily travel," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 501-511.
    8. Muhammad Ahmad Al-Rashid & Hong Ching Goh & Yong Adilah Shamsul Harumain & Zulfiqar Ali & Tiziana Campisi & Tahir Mahmood, 2020. "Psychosocial Barriers of Public Transport Use and Social Exclusion among Older Adults: Empirical Evidence from Lahore, Pakistan," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(1), pages 1-23, December.
    9. Friman, Margareta & Gärling, Tommy & Ettema, Dick & Olsson, Lars E., 2017. "How does travel affect emotional well-being and life satisfaction?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 170-180.
    10. Tammaru, Tiit & Sevtsuk, Andres & Witlox, Frank, 2023. "Towards an equity-centred model of sustainable mobility: Integrating inequality and segregation challenges in the green mobility transition," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    11. Gössling, Stefan, 2016. "Urban transport justice," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 1-9.
    12. Combs, Tabitha S., 2017. "Examining changes in travel patterns among lower wealth households after BRT investment in Bogotá, Colombia," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 11-20.
    13. Duvarci, Yavuz & Yigitcanlar, Tan & Mizokami, Shoshi, 2015. "Transportation disadvantage impedance indexing: A methodological approach to reduce policy shortcomings," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 61-75.
    14. Lin, Joanne Yuh-Jye & Jenelius, Erik & Cebecauer, Matej & Rubensson, Isak & Chen, Cynthia, 2023. "The equity of public transport crowding exposure," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    15. Jiankun Yang & Min He & Mingwei He, 2022. "Exploring the Group Difference in the Nonlinear Relationship between Commuting Satisfaction and Commuting Time," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-19, July.
    16. Ryan, Jean & Martens, Karel, 2023. "Defining and implementing a sufficient level of accessibility: What’s stopping us?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    17. Remme, Devyn & Sareen, Siddharth & Haarstad, Håvard, 2022. "Who benefits from sustainable mobility transitions? Social inclusion, populist resistance and elite capture in Bergen, Norway," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    18. Cohen, Tom, 2020. "Tools for addressing transport inequality: A novel variant of accessibility measurement," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    19. Kim, Sang-O & Palm, Matthew & Han, Soojung & Klein, Nicholas J., 2023. "Facing a time crunch: Time poverty and travel behaviour in Canada," SocArXiv z6tvd, Center for Open Science.
    20. Xia, Jianhong(Cecilia) & Nesbitt, Joshua & Daley, Rebekah & Najnin, Arfanara & Litman, Todd & Tiwari, Surya Prasad, 2016. "A multi-dimensional view of transport-related social exclusion: A comparative study of Greater Perth and Sydney," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 205-221.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:socinc:v4:y:2016:i:3:p:36-45. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.