Accessibility analysis as an urban planning tool: Gas station location


D. A. Escobar, Carlos Cadena Gaitan & F. J. Garcia

#2014-048

We apply geo-statistical techniques to find relationships between the geographic location of urban "Gas Stations" (GS) and operational features offered by the transport network in Manizales (Colombia). This research is built upon primary information collected during a period longer than one year using GPS (more than 18 million data points). The methodology consists of i) The set-up of the entire urban transport infrastructure network, ii) The calculation of the average operating speeds in the links, iii) The calculation of the global average accessibility offered by the infrastructure network in different transport modes, iv) The calculation of the Spatial Coverage Index, area, population and number of houses covered by the curves of travel time. Graphical results explain the average times invested in reaching a particular GS, and quantitative comparisons between different types of stations are studied. Thus, we establish which sectors of the city are deficient in coverage of this type of activity. The overall results reveal the possibility of reaching a GS in Manizales in an average travel time between 4 and 22 min.

JEL Classification: R32, R41

Keywords: Gas Stations, Accessibility, GPS, coverage, urban mobility, operating speeds, Geostatistics

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