The faster the better: The impact of public transport speed and transfer pricing on job accessibility

Source abstract

This paper analyzes how different public transport scenarios in Montevideo, the capital city of Uruguay, impact accessibility to job opportunities. It also assesses whether these changes increase or decrease equity in accessibility. Specifically, we simulate scenarios defined by changes in two characteristics of the public transport system: improvements in the operational speed on specific corridors in the network and fare scheme restrictions on the number of transfers allowed per trip. Our results indicate that both increasing operational speed and allowing passengers to make more transfers result in increasing accessibility to job opportunities by public transport. Nevertheless, the magnitudes of these effects differ: increasing operational speed on specific corridors has a much greater impact compared to allowing for free transfers. We reach the same conclusions regarding the analysis of equity results. From a policy perspective, this paper shows the need to adopt accessibility as a policy goal to shed light on the challenges that Montevideo’s public transport system must address. The fare scheme currently in place in the city, which allows for one transfer, seems to be already successful in assuring basic connectivity to citizens. However, there is room—and need—for improvement regarding operational speed to improve accessibility and equity.