Identification and prioritisation of access problems in rural areas

The concept of rural transportation planning has changed over the years. Nowadays a needs-based approach is generally used where the accessibility of the population to the activity centres or services is given more emphasis than the earlier concept of only the construction of motorable roads. In the process, a new approach known as Integrated Rural Accessibility Planning (IRAP) has been developed. One of the steps in IRAP is the quantification of villagers' accessibility levels to different activities or services. An attempt has been made in this article to improve the existing method of quantification and prioritisation by introducing the concept of the Accessibility Shortfall Index (ASI).