A101 Surveying acceptable walking distance to different modes of local public transport in Munich area ID

Abstract Background Walking is often referred as sports or recreational activities but it has been observed through the years that it is not only a physical activity for achieving fitness but also to access different public transport in transit to destination. There is an increasing demand to improve the accessibility of walking to different services in order to develop sustainable public transport system. In Munich city, the modal split for mobility without car is around 68% and among them 26% makes their trip by foot. Most of these trips made by foot are engaged with walking for public transport. So in order to increase the facilities for the pedestrian to improve their accessibility, it is important to know how far people are willing to walk for different local public transport modes. In large metropolitan areas planners makes assumption about walking distance for the catchment areas for the accessibility of public transport according guidelines, which differ from city to city. But for Munich, the empirical origin of these commonly used measures is unclear. According to the transport plan for the city of Munich the threshold for the catchment area of public transport is different for the central business district (CBD), highly dense area (HAD) and low dense area (LDA). So, it is a clear question whether pedestrians are walking within the assumed threshold or further and how this catchment area affects the decision of travel to desired station. Methods The aim of this research is to observe actual walking distance of the pedestrian for different public transport modes and to find individual’s perception for deciding their route in terms of trip purpose and mode choice. Paper based intercept survey was done in Munich area with 500 respondents to collect the data and analysed through SPSS and Esri-ArcGIS. Results Results showed that respondents living in LDA, walked comparatively longer than respondents living in CBD. It is observed that pedestrian on an average walked longer for suburban train and subway rather than bus and tram. It is also found that pedestrian accepts longer walk to train than other public transport modes and they choose the most direct and quickest route for their access to public transport. Conclusions In order to increase the user of public transport as well as to encourage people towards walking in future, these findings can be considered by the city of Munich to provide the infrastructure and design scale for public transport station within a larger radius.