Perceived Accessibility : Living a satisfactory life with help of the transport system

Abstract: This thesis fills a gap in contemporary transport research and planning as it introduces perceived accessibility as a theoretical and methodological concept for incorporating the individual dimension of accessibility in current practice. Perceived accessibility is defined as “how easy it is to live a satisfactory life with the help of the transport system”, and is proposed as a complement to objective measures and understandings of accessibility.The thesis includes three studies. Study I developed a measure for capturing perceived accessibility with a specific transport mode, based on theories and conceptualizations of accessibility. Study II looked at determinants of perceived accessibility, and Study III further developed the measure of perceived accessibility to include actual travel (combinations of transport modes), and explored the relation between perceived accessibility and objectively measured accessibility for the same geographical area in Sweden. In all, the thesis provides background ideas and theory on perceived accessibility, and a validated quantitative approach to capturing perceived accessibility in day-to-day travel. Empirical findings further support the complementary nature of the approach and results indicate that assessments of perceived accessibility may be helpful in determining where to direct interventions aiming at improving accessibility by evaluating different transport modes or different segments of individuals. The method developed for capturing perceived accessibility shows merit in contributing to further theory development on accessibility by its ability to identify determinants of perceived accessibility and its potential in identifying segments of the population that experience significantly lower accessibility than other groups, and thus are at risk of experiencing social exclusion or suffer from transport disadvantage.