Accessibility and equity indicators: approach for wider transport project assessment in Chile

Abstract

There is increasing consent about the importance of incorporating wider impacts to better analyse transport projects and plans. While in some developed countries these ideas have begun implementation, in Latin America many countries even fail to apply the traditional cost-benefit analysis. Moreover, recent research reports the need to assess equity impacts of projects. In a context of great inequalities and hurried investments, like in Latin America, to properly allocate resources between different projects has an even larger meaning. Furthermore, literature about accessibility highlights the readiness of their indicators on assessing equitable access to opportunities. Hence, this work proposes ways to measure access inequality that may contribute to methodology development of transport project assessment. Chile represents an opportunity to develop this approach. Therefore different accessibility methods are explored and analysed in the context of Santiago. An indicator for access equity is proposed after implementing a measure based on generalised travel cost of four-step transport models. Methodological implications are discussed aiming to incorporate this approach to transport project assessment. Particularly there are two main paths: explore a value for accessibility to allow a cost-benefit analysis or assess equity impacts in a complementary way. Conclusion remarks operational and concept issues that need to be addressed to further build a useful accessibility indicator.