Analysis of perceived pedestrian accessibility to railway stations in Bavaria

Walking connects different modes of transport and acts as the main feeder for public transport. Nonetheless, ensuring high-quality accessibility for pedestrians to railway stations is seldom evaluated beyond measurable factors such as walking distance and time. Although several studies found differences in calculated and perceived accessibility, little research has so far focused on the factors that are influencing perceived pedestrian accessibility and thus causing these differences.

In order to contribute to the current efforts of conceptualizing perceived accessibility, this study explores the factors which determine whether or not people walk to train stations. Potential influencing factors were first derived from a literature review and clustered into six quality criteria: 

• Directness 
• Simplicity 
• Traffic safety 
• Security 
• Comfort 
• Built environment
   

Then, on-site and online surveys were conducted in five Bavarian towns (Germany) to understand the importance of the identified factors and how this differs between different people and places. The results confirm that above all comfort, safety and security factors play an important role for pedestrian accessibility [to railway stations and, thus, public transport generally]. In addition, significant differences were found between different age groups and city sizes (p. 1).

Supporting evidence

The study was conducted in Bavarian (Germany) municipalities, where railway stations play a bigger role in everyday mobility compared to large cities that typically have multiple public transport hubs. The following five municipalities were chosen as the study area to represent different station typologies in terms of size, passenger numbers and their role in the network:  

• Aichach  
• Bad Neustadt a.d.Saale  
• Freilassing 
• Hilpoltstein 
• Landshut (p. 4) 

The study conducted a literature review to define six overarching quality criteria to evaluate pedestrian access to railway stations above: 

• Directness 
• Simplicity 
• Traffic safety 
• Security 
• Comfort 
• Built Environment (p. 4 – 6) 

The study also conducted 754 surveys, 217 online and 537 in-person surveys in the study area. For each city, the location-based survey results (starting points, mode of transport to the railway station, reported problem statements) were visualized in a map and matched with an overarching quality criteria. In addition, travel-time isochrones (contour-based accessibility measure) were calculated for the five assessed train stations, using 10 minutes walking time and a walking speed of 5 km/h, and thus representing the average time that people are willing to walk to places. The calculated isochrones were intersected with population data from the Census household survey to assess if there is a connection between mode choice, walking distance to the railway station and reported problem areas (p. 7).

Key findings

• City size has an influence on the mode choice on the way to the railway station: 
• In small towns, people are 2.41 times more likely to walk because ‘it is fast’ and they have no alternative (presumably because of the lack of bus connections).  
• In the medium-sized cities, people are 3.22 times more likely to travel by bus (p. 8). 
• Factors related to comfort, traffic safety and security (such as freedom from barriers, availability of street crossings and lighting) are perceived as the most important in terms of pedestrian accessibility to railway stations (p. 17). 
• People have different needs and abilities based on age, luggage, daytime and weather conditions: 
• People (especially children) are willing to walk long distances to reach the railway station, mostly because they do not have an alternative 
• Older people care more about the attractiveness of the environment (p. 17) 
• Transportation, land use, temporal and individual should be included when evaluating perceived accessibility to allow comprehensive analyses (p. 17).