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CITY REGION BOUNDARIES STUDY
APPENDIX B TRANSPORT LINKS
B.1 There are two main ways of describing the characteristics of transport links as: demand for travel between locations; or the accessibility of locations. This review summarises very briefly some travel demand and accessibility data for Scotland.
Accessibility Data
B.2 In recent years the free flow travel times by road and rail systems from the major cities have been relatively stable. Major infrastructure investment has been targeted at maintaining existing travel times between key locations rather than opening up new routes. In March 2002 the Scottish Executive (SE 2002a) confirmed that its priority for the next decade would be to continue with this strategy. For the purposes of this review it is assumed that infrastructure investment and travel demand management will broadly maintain the geography of the networks as they are at present.
B.3 The largest proportion of travel to and from the cities is by car. Figure 4 shows road travel times from the city centres for contours of 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, 6 hours and greater than 6 hours. It can be seen that a large proportion of the population of Scotland is within an hour of one of the four cities. 90% of car journeys in Scotland have a duration of less than an hour, and nearly 80% are less than 30 minutes. These thresholds are therefore of greatest interest in defining the city region boundaries.
B.4 The geography of rail travel is substantially different. On average, rail travel caters best for longer trips on a few strategic transport corridors. A high proportion of rail travel is inter city, so rail travel patterns do not lend themselves to defining the boundaries of city regions. However rail also plays an important role in linking satellite towns with the cities. The rail market of interest is therefore the rail trips of about 30 minutes or less where the network of rail stations provide a focus for car, walking, cycling, and bus trips to link with rail to provide access to the city centre.
B.5 Figure 5 shows the approximate distance on the rail network which can be travelled in 30 minutes. This does not include access or wait times to the rail network, nor can the range of express and local stopping services be fully represented in such a simple map.
Figure B1 - Road Travel Time to Nearest Major City
Figure B2 - Approximate 30 Minute Rail Travel by City
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