Spatiotemporal differences in accessibility to employment by car or public transport in East Flanders, Belgium

In answer to the economic, environmental and social externalities associated with car-oriented developments, strengthening the position of public transportation has received a growing policy and academic interest. To date, however, research has addressed the spatial distribution of this modal disparity while its temporal variability has received little attention. Based on the recent endeavors in computing time-continuous accessibility levels to job locations, the spatial as well as temporal modal disparity is calculated for the province of East Flanders, Belgium. Therefore, the public transport provision is compared to the access by car at regular time intervals during a predefined time window. The results show that the largest part of the considered area has insufficient provision to employment through public transport in comparison to the access by car. Understanding the spatiotemporal complexity of transit provision is crucial in encouraging mode shifts to diminish car dependency.