An analysis of accessibility to grocery stores by walking and cycling. : A comparative study of Ålidhem, Tomtebo, Carlshem and Sofiehem neighbourhoods in Umeå using ArcGIS Network Dataset

Abstract: Accessibility is a gateway to accessing opportunities or service sites, i.e., grocery shopping, healthcare and jobs and it has been used as a proxy to measure inequalities. The equity, in travel time or distance, to accessing of these services is vital to ensure high accessibility hence providing equality. Population increase leading to urban sprawl affects accessibility in the absence of prudent residential spatial planning and transport systems and infrastructure. Urban sprawl creates a distance between populations and centres of services such as grocery stores. This promotes the growth of car-dependency to accessing these services that are not easily reachable by non-motorised transport of walking and biking.This thesis measures accessibility to grocery stores by comparing the travel time of populations in the four neighbourhoods, of Ålidhem, Tomtebo, Carlshem and Sofiehem, by walking and biking. The measuring is done by using the ArcGIS Network Analyst to create and build a single-modal network dataset of pedestrian and bike lanes in the study area. Accessibility to grocery stores is measured using the service areas created based on the grocery store location and it highlights all the accessible streets from the centre within a time impedance. Afterwards, the populations are aggregated in each service area of each neighbourhood to compare the time difference of accessibility to a grocery store.With distance decay effects, the walking time distance restricts accessibility to grocery stores to a limited population in the neighbourhoods. The bike time distance, however, increased the residents in the study area who can access the grocery stores. The new location for a Coop grocery store provides the highest accessibility to grocery stores compared to the Ålidhem Centre grocery store.From the results of the analysis, the bike travel is the most equitable hence equal mode of active transport for all the four neighbourhoods.