ACCESSIBILITY, NETWORK EFFICIENCY, AND TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE PLANNING

Most accessibility measures reported in the literature do not meet cer tain requirements of transport planners, as the results offered by the se indicators are heavily influenced by the geographic location of the places. Peripheral locations invariably figure as being of low access ibility and consequently as possible receptors for new investments, ev en though they may already have a very good provision of transport inf rastructure. In this paper an accessibility indicator is formulated th at neutralizes the effect of geographic location. To this end, the cus tomary notion of distance (length, time, or costs) is substituted by a nother which expresses the ease of access in terms of network efficien cy. This indicator can be useful to assist decisions to invest in tran sport networks, as it is more sensitive than the potential model to th e transport infrastructure needs of each individual region. It has bee n tested by application to the current Spanish Infrastructure Master P lan.