Accessibility in a metropolis - Toward a better understanding of land use and travel

An attempt was made to determine how accessibility affects aspects of long-term and short-term travel behavior. The accessibility indices that were used represent the ease with which opportunities for engagement in activities can be reached from a geographical zone in an urban area. The behavioral aspects examined include engagement in activities, automobile ownership and use, and travel patterns as represented by the number of trips, number of trip chains, and total travel time expenditure. Data from the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe metropolitan area of Japan and the southern California coast are used to examine the following conjectures: time availability is more closely associated with engagement in activities than accessibility; accessibility no longer affects automobile ownership or use in the metropolises of industrialized countries where motorization has matured; and given automobile ownership and use, travel patterns are conditionally independent of accessibility.