Accessibility measures of U.S. metropolitan areas

This paper constructs an accessibility index that captures the overall transportation access level of an area. This index is formulated as a natural extension of the existing relative and integral accessibility measures. Theoretical modelling and empirical tests demonstrate that the index has a convergence property and can be calculated accurately without incurring very high costs. Regression analyses show that the index captures the overall accessibility levels of areas very well. Using this index, the overall access levels of the sixty largest U.S. metropolitan areas are calculated.