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End the Reign of Single-Occupancy Vehicles for Greater Urban Access
Article

End the Reign of Single-Occupancy Vehicles for Greater Urban Access



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Recommendation

Do the richest people in your city take public transport, and can the poorest people in your city use public transport to reach better-paying jobs? If your answer to these two questions is no, you’re likely living in an area with poor urban mobility, or perhaps it’s an area where people mainly use single-occupancy vehicles to get around. The fruits of such a transportation system are pollution, inequality, congestion, limited mobility and an underperforming economy. Do you know what your public authorities and private firms can do to improve the situation? The Boston Consulting Group outline solutions in this special report.

Summary

The BCG Accessibility Index measures mobility performance and patterns among various cities.

Access to transportation exerts a strong influence on the well-being of a city’s residents. With that in mind, the Boston Consulting Group created the BCG Accessibility Index with two key indicators for understanding a city’s mobility performance: zone accessibility and city accessibility. The Zone Accessibility Index measures “the percentage of the city’s inhabitants and of jobs in the metropolitan area that can be reached within a certain amount of time (for example, 30 or 60 minutes) using a car or public transit at peak travel times.” The City Accessibility Index measures “the average of the accessibility indexes of all the zones or subzones, weighted by the population of each one.” The City Accessibility Index also indicates average travel times per resident.

The indices used data about population, job locations and travel time from both public...

About the Authors

Joël Hazan, Benjamin Fassenot, Pierre-François Marteau and Ugo Deschamps are professionals with the Boston Consulting Group.


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