Accessibility of bus transport in Nord-Jæren

In line with aims of making the transport sector more sustainable, accessible bus service is essential. Nord-Jæren is an exciting geographical area concerning this because of heavy investments made here on bus rapid transit (BRT) infrastructure in recent and coming years. This thesis examines how accessible bus transport is in urban Nord-Jæren before the completion of this BRT project, named the Bus Road (“Bussveien”). Additionally, it assesses whether areas with higher address densities have better bus accessibility and vice versa. Bus accessibility throughout urban Nord-Jæren is found from a system perspective by measuring six factors identified to influence bus transport accessibility. These are access distance, service coverage, travel time, bus route options, frequency, and service span. Each factor affects spatial or temporal and local or network accessibility. This thesis contains measures of how well each basic statistical unit (“grunnkrets”) and statistical tract (“delområde”) in the research area perform in the abovementioned accessibility factors, categories, and overall. The results indicate that bus transport is generally most accessible in and between Stavanger and Sandnes city centres, where the first part of the Bus Road will come. In addition, some areas west and north of Stavanger city centre are also among the most accessible by bus transport. South and east of Sandnes city centre, less accessible areas exist, while Randaberg and Sola municipalities have the least accessible areas. Generally, the least accessible areas have among the lowest address densities, notably less than 500 addresses/km2. However, many low-density areas are also among the most accessible. The findings in this thesis may be used to identify areas in Nord-Jæren with poor bus transport accessibility. In addition, they can explain why some areas have poorer accessibility than others and how it can be improved