Publication: Mobility for All: Getting the Right Urban Indicator
Date
2015-11
ISSN
Published
2015-11
Author(s)
Peralta-Quirós, Tatiana
Abstract
Most urban transport projects have
focused on improving the ability of citizens to move freely
and swiftly about the city. Typically, that ability has been
measured by the share of the population living within, say,
0.5 kilometer of a transit stop, or the maximum travel
distance per unit of time, or the amount of transportation
infrastructure in a city. Using such ‘proximity’ measures to
monitor urban mobility has led to congested highway networks
and public transit systems that have failed to bring jobs
and services within the practical reach of residents,
especially the poor. These proximity-based measures
represent indirect attempts to capture the real objective of
transit systems: the accessibility of opportunities. New
technologies and richer databases now make accessibility,
the number of jobs, health facilities, schools, and other
essential services that are available without a car in, say,
30–75 minutes, a practical criterion for judging the state
of mobility and for designing ways to improve it. Using the
accessibility criterion will be critical to achieving SDG
11, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal to
‘make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe,
resilient and sustainable.’
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Peralta-Quirós, Tatiana. 2015. Mobility for All: Getting the Right Urban Indicator. Connections;No. 25. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25005 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”