Accessibility strategies should be built upon an analytical and evidence base and developed in partnership with other service providers using the analysis and evidence as a starting point for discussions.

In order to help authorities produce the necessary analysis and evidence base, the Department for Transport is providing:

• Bespoke software, Accession, which can be used to map current accessibility levels and to consider the effect of options for improvements
  
  
• Data on key destinations and public transport networks which enable Accession to be able to produce its calculations
  
  
• Core indicators, broken down to ward level for each authority, which can be used as a base for producing locally relevant indicators and targets.

Modelling

Development and testing on the bespoke software, Accession, has now been completed and it is now available from MVA Ltd. The Department for Transport is recommending that authorities use Accession when undertaking accessibility planning within their Local Transport Plans, however, its use is not mandatory.

The Accession software provides a complete tool for developing a model to support all aspects of accessibility assessment and appraisal but in many cases the analysis can also be carried out using other mapping or GIS applications such as ArcView, MapInfo or TransCAD. Other accessibility models may similarly be employed

For more information about getting hold of Accession and for specific queries about the Accession software please visit the Accession website at www.accessiongis.com.

Assistance and help using Accession is available via the Accession Helpdesk at  http://helpdesk.mva.co.uk for questions relating to the behaviour or performance of the software.

Data

In order to carry out accessibility analysis three general types of data are required:

• Information describing the characteristics of the local population, to help identify areas where people with specific needs are located
  
  
• Information describing the location and availability of key services in the area such as doctors, dentists, schools etc.
  
  
• Information describing the local public transport services to help identify how well connected these facilities are to the populations they serve.

Much information about socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the local population can be sourced from readily available national data sets such as the 2001 Census of Population and the 2004 Index of Multiple Deprivation.

Some information about local facilities and services can also be derived from national data sets maintained by respective organisations. This data though will be improved and augmented by local knowledge and locally maintained databases.

The DfT has provided LTAs with a CD containing some centrally available geo-demographic and service locations data sets to support this analysis.

Data describing local bus services has also been provided by the DfT. This data is derived from the data collected by Transport Direct and has been supplied in ATCO-CIF format which can be read directly by the Accession software. For information on how best to use such data, see the learning Toolkit

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Presentations from the withinreach Mapping and Data Seminars (December 2006)

These are all Microsoft PowerPoint files. If you are not able to view these files, you can download free viewers from Microsoft’s website. please get in touch.

Introduction to seminars (450Kb)  
Data sources (825Kb)  
Analysis techniques (575Kb)  
Accession, MVA Consultancy (5.3Mb)  
Nottinghamshire County Council (1.2Mb)  
SE Dorset (3Mb)  
Thales, NPTDR (1Mb)  
Transport Direct, NPTDR (500Kb)  

All the seminars can be downloaded as one PDF file. Warning, the file is 17Mb in size.