Accessibility and equity assessment in public transport services : A Case Study in Palma de Mallorca

Abstract: Public transport planning should start by having a clear knowledge of the gaps(mismatches) between transport supply and demand. The appraisal of transportrelatedprojects are widely assessed using tools such Cost Benefit analysis which fail toexplain how the benefits and burdens are distributed among the population which canbroaden the existing inequities in cities. Numerous studies have aimed at developingmethodologies for performing equity assessments. The thesis’ goals are twofold:performing a literature review on the available equity methods to provide conclusionson which method works best for transportrelatedprojects and to assess the usefulnessof performing an ”SpatialGapAnalysis” as an ”a priory” tool. The selected methodsare applied to a real case scenario in Palma de Mallorca. The results show that theGINI coefficient delivers the most reliable results along with the Theil index that is toosensitive to changes on the high end of the distribution. However, equity assessmentslargely depend on how accessibility is being defined, which should be a previous step onwhich to take extra care of. The case study in Mallorca suggests an increase of inequitiesto reach opportunities in any of the proposed scenarios while there is a generalizeddecrease of equities if considering the distribution of the amount of access to publictransport.