THE WOOLWICH RAIL TUNNEL: A GIS BASED ASSESSMENT OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC IMPACTS

Improvements in transport infrastructure are usually judged on financial and/or social grounds. The majority of schemes, however, cannot be justified purely on financial grounds alone and so the value of acessibility improvements to the community needs to be considered. Improvements in overall accessibility can only be part of the issue, and so consideration must be given to how these changes affect people's lives, in terms of job and recreational opportunities, development potential and social and economic well-being. These factors were assessed in the context of the proposed Woolwich Rail Tunnel, with a GIS being central to the data integration and analysis process. London Transport provided travel time information from two sources, these being from Railplan and the Intermediate Modes Study (which had zones disaggregated down to bus stop level). They were combined spatially and a matrix of travel time changes from each zone to all other zones in London produced. Other information was placed onto the GIS which included: unemployment and employment and job vacancy data; shopping centre size; social and economic deprivation (via composite measures based on census data); and potential sites for redevelopment. The data listed above was linked to the travel time information and a series of gravity type models produced. These quantified the impacts of the scheme on deprived areas, employment opportunities to the unemployed, redevelopment opportunities, and changes in the distribution of spending within the retail centres of East London. This study furnishes the London Borough of Greenwich with the necessary information to determine whether the scheme has a sufficiently positive effect on its residents to warrant supporting the proposal. For the covering abstract, see IRRD 890401.

• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/isbn/0860502988
• Corporate Authors:

  PTRC Education and Research Services Limited

  Glenthorne House, Hammersmith Grove
  London W6OL9,   England 
• Authors:
  • AUSTIN, K P
  • EVANS, R C
• Conference:
  • GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS. PROCEEDINGS OF SEMINAR J HELD AT THE PTRC EUROPEAN TRANSPORT FORUM, BRUNEL UNIVERSITY, ENGLAND, 2-6 SEPTEMBER 1996
• Publication Date: 1996

Language

• English

Media Info

• Features: References;
• Pagination: 12 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Conferences; Economics; Geographic information systems; Gravity models; Mathematical models; Origin and destination; Planning; Public transit; Railroad transportation; Sociology; Transportation; Travel time; Trip length; Tunnels; Urban areas
• Geographic Terms: United Kingdom
• ITRD Terms: 8525: Conference; 255: Economics; 8605: Geographical information system; 690: Gravity model; 697: Journey time; 6473: Mathematical model; 687: Origin destination traffic; 143: Planning; 744: Public transport; 1173: Rail bound transport; 2253: Sociology; 1155: Transport; 3374: Tunnel; 8119: United Kingdom; 313: Urban area
• Subject Areas: Economics; Planning and Forecasting; Transportation (General);

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00739491
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Transport Research Laboratory
• ISBN: 0-86050-298-8
• Files: ITRD
• Created Date: Aug 28 1997 12:00AM