Degrees of sustainable location of railway stations: Integrating space syntax and node place value model on railway sations in the province of North Holland's strategic plan for 2010-2040

Degrees of sustainable location of railway stations: Integrating space syntax and node place value model on railway sations in the province of North Holland's strategic plan for 2010-2040

Van Nes, A.
Stolk, E.

Architecture and The Built Environment

Urbanism

2012-01-03

Mobility on rails is acknowledged to be one of the most sustainable means of transportation between cities and towns. Therefore, a railway station’s location in a built environment and its degree of accessibility is essential to reach as many travellers as possible. Even though there exist several writings on network cities and TOD principles concerning rail accessibility to urban centres and sub?sentres, the spatial configuration of the local street and road network in a railway station’s vicinity is seldom taken into consideration in the discussion on railway transport. Therefore, two different analyses methods were used with purpose to identify the degree of regional and local inter?accessibility of all train stations in the province of North Holland in the Netherlands. The space syntax method provided measurements on a street net’s interaccessibility on different scale levels, while the Node Place model analyses provided the degree of a station’s attractiveness in terms of place value and means of transportation value. As the results show, correlations were found between a station’s degree of local and regional accessibility and frequency of the timetables. When implementing and improving sustainable means of public transportation, urban functions such as dwellings, shops, services, workshops and offices have to be in short walking distances from stations and the street network must be easily understandable for way?finding. The results from this inquiry were applied in the province’s policy plan as a priority list for station improvements in terms of degree of local accessibility. Moreover, the priority list of the implementation of new housing areas was made on basis on the degree of local and regional accessibility to existing railway stations.

railway station
accessibility
node place value model
sustainability

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:b88bfa79-90b3-4a7e-aaba-0a38b8596042

PUC

978-956-345-862-6

Proceedings of the 8th International Space Syntax Symposium, January 3-6, 2012, Santiago de Chile, Chile. Editors: Greene, M., Reyes, J., Castro, A.

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2012 PUC
The authors