Health research needs more comprehensive accessibility measures: integrating time and transport modes from open data

Area of Science:

• Urban planning and public health
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial analysis
• Transportation science

Background:

• Health-related accessibility studies often overlook temporality and multimodality.
• This oversight can lead to inaccurate assessments of healthy food accessibility in urban areas.
• Integrating spatio-temporal and multimodal measures is essential for realistic urban research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate the importance of integrating temporality and multimodality in health accessibility research.
• To propose a methodological approach for combining travel modes and temporality in spatial accessibility analyses.
• To analyze healthy food accessibility in the Helsinki metropolitan area, Finland.

Main Methods:

• Spatial analyses conducted on 250m statistical grid squares.
• Travel times measured from residences to grocery stores at 5 PM, 10 PM, and 1 AM using public transport and private cars.
• Employed a door-to-door approach for realistic, comparable travel time measurements across modes.

Main Results:

• Both time of day and mode of transport significantly impact accessibility outcomes.
• Travel time to healthy food sources varies considerably depending on the time.
• Public transport can be faster than private cars for accessing healthy food in central urban areas with dense networks.

Conclusions:

• Temporality and transport modes are critical components for modeling urban health-related accessibility.
• Neglecting these factors can result in simplified or erroneous accessibility assessments.
• Inaccurate accessibility measures risk creating health inequalities due to flawed planning and decision-making.