Mobility, access, and choice: a new source of evidence

The availability of a large national data set of accessibility indicators allows investigation of the relationship between mobility and access to, and choice of, key destinations for the population of England. The destinations considered are primary and secondary schools, further education colleges, family doctors, hospitals, food stores, and places of employment. For the populations of 353 local authorities, the average extent of choice of these destinations is estimated as a function of travel time and mode. It is concluded that high levels of access and choice are available to the large part of the population that has available a car or good public transport. This finding is consistent with the suggestion that the demand for daily travel has saturated.