King's College London

How accessible is a public urban transportation system for people with re- duced mobility? Are there ways of quantifying this aspect of the system so that we can prioritise investment in stations that, once rendered accessible, would deliver the greatest benefits to travellers? Focussing on travel time and interchange differences, we present a method that uses network science and spatio-temporal analysis to rank un-accessible stations in order to minimise the divergence between accessible and non-accessible routes.

Taking London as case study, and Origin/Destination data derived from the ‘Oyster Card’ system, we find that 50% of trips become 50% longer for people with reduced mobility. Our approach to ranking the accessibility of stations yields solutions that are 30% more effective than a solution that seeks solely to minimise the number of interchanges. These results highlight the potential for the analysis of ‘smart card’ data to enable network operators to obtain maximum value from their infrastructure investments in support of expanded access for all users.