Assessing the walking access to bus stops in Umeå urban area and the relationship with the socio-economic characteristics

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere and protect the environment, Swedish cities are heavily invested in sustainable development by developing pedestrian roads and intensifying public transport. Their goal is to make the population less dependent on cars by facilitating accessibility to transit transport. The urban area of ​​Umeå (Sweden), which is experiencing an annual increasing of it population due to urban development, includes 244 km of pedestrian or bike routes and an intensified bus network. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the walking accessibility of the population at bus stops and to analyze the socio-economic relationship. The use of GIS tools allowed to calculate the proportion of the population and the houses around the bus stop, the average distance accessibility. The use of 3D allowed the observation of access constraints related to the topography and to calculate the slope. The use of the multiple regression model has analyzed the relationship between the shortest accessibility distance and the socio-economic factors that are the income, gender and age. The results show that the average distance of access to the bus stop is 186m. 99.2% of the population lives within 800m from the bus stops. The results of the regression showed that income is the main factor that pushes people to take the bus and live in certain types of housing. The observation of the 3d map and the calculation of the slope made it possible to know the neighborhoods established in the hill and whose residents are susceptible to spend more energy than the other inhabitant living on flat ground. The results mean that most people living in the urban area of ​​Umeå have good access to the bus stop whatever the social group, the level of income and the type of housing