Evaluation of accessibility impacts of land-use scenarios: the implications of job competition, land-use, and infrastructure developments for the Netherlands

Activity-based accessibility measures, describing the level of access to spatially distributed activities, are not put to the same use in land use and/or transport policy evaluations as are infrastructure-based accessibility measures, which describe congestion levels or the average speed on the motorway network. In this paper we attempt to improve the current evaluation practice by the application of potential, activity-based, accessibility measures for the analysis of job accessibility, using existing traditional land-use and transport data and/or models. We try to improve the interpretability of the results by estimating the separate influence of land-use changes, infrastructure projects, and congestion on the development of job accessibility. A case study of the Netherlands shows the importance of incorporating job competition and the match between educational and job levels in the analysis of job accessibility.