Using open-source planning tools to promote public and active travel and address geographical inequalities in provision

This research seeks to identify the spatial accessibility implications of changes in public transport provision and demonstrate how open-source techniques can be used to plan routes and help address geographical inequalities. This study involves the implementation of an open-source web-based solution for dynamically evaluating the accessibility of services via public transport. The application aims to provide policymakers, service providers, transport managers and the public with intuitive and highly interactive tools to help analyse and compare how access to services varies under different transport configurations. These tools demonstrate how public transport networks may be affected by proposed changes in transport infrastructure, the placement of service delivery points, or timetable and routing modifications. Members of the public will be able to utilise the application to visualise how proposed public transport changes may affect them in terms of changes to the levels of services they can access under different local planning scenarios. This promotes exploratory analysis as well as giving local stakeholders an input into planning local transport routes and timetables.