Average opportunity-based accessibility of public transit systems to grocery stores in small urban areas

AbstractThis research studies the accessibility of grocery stores to university students using the public transportation system, drawing from a case study of Fargo, North Dakota. Taking into consideration the combined travel time components of walking, riding, and waiting, this study measures two types of accessibilities: accessibility to reach a particular place and accessibility to reach the bus stop to ride the public transit system. These two accessibilities are interdependent and cannot perform without each other. A new method to calculate the average accessibility measure for the transit routes is proposed. A step-wise case study analysis indicates that one route provides accessibility to a grocery store in eight minutes. This also suggests that the North Dakota State University area has moderate accessibility to grocery stores.