Improving equity of public transportation planning. The case of Palma de Mallorca (Spain)

Abstract

Public transport planning requires consideration of equity in access of the population to the transport service. This paper presents a methodology for the analysis of public transport in the city of Palma and its evaluation in terms of spatial and social equity. First, the analysis of supply based on the activity of the bus stops has been performed. Then an AHP multicriteria weighted model over a set of socioeconomic variables has been developed to obtain a public transport demand index. Finally the analysis of equity has been made using the Gini Index and a sensitivity analysis of bus lines. The results show the distribution of equity for all the 88 districts of city. This paper presents a simple and powerful methodology exportable to transportation planning studies in other geographic areas.