PPGIS approach for defining multimodal travel thresholds: Accessibility of popular recreation environments by the water

It is essential to ensure equal accessibility to services, such as sport and recreation facilities or green and water environments. Differences in accessibility can potentially cause negative health and social welfare implications. Accessibility and service area analyses from the perspective of access equality are typically rather simple. They are often based on arbitrary travel-distance thresholds and made only with a single mode of transport in mind. Thus, they exclude the multidimensional nature of accessibility where individuals' travel behavior and perceived accessibility also play an important role. In this paper, a PPGIS method was used to empirically investigate distances and durations that respondents travel with different modes of transport to access popular water environments. Service area analyses were built on person-based and objectively measured threshold values that not only take into account the spatio-temporal elements of transport networks and a land use component but also recognize the requirements and preferences of individuals and their capacity to access and participate. The results showed that the most common mode of transport to access waters is walking. Generally, the residents travel by foot for 1.7 km to access water environments. Cars were found as the second most common mode of transport used, and most of the popular water environments are accessible by car from every corner of the study area in a given travel threshold time. The results demonstrate the importance of deriving local parameters and the potential of the PPGIS approach for accessibility and service area delineation. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.