Accessibility
Accessibility to a region is not only decided by the form of transport or traffic mode; in reality it is rather determined by many different forms of transport and traffic nodes. That is why it may be difficult to set up a definitive and universal goal for accessibility for travellers and goods.
Today the Öresund region is a part of a network of complex relations for persons and goods reaching far beyond the borders of the Öresund region. In light of this it is important to regard the accessibility of the Öresund region in an international perspective. Accessibility to an area can be seen based on time or costs for transport, which among other things are decided by the localisation of the cities, infrastructures and companies, as well as mobility of people and goods.
A localisation pattern is a structure that changes relatively slowly over time; on the other hand, mobility changes more quickly in the form of new routes for air traffic and sea freight, train connections etc. Consequently, traffic nodes such as airports, commercial ports, stations and transport centres are important platforms between the lines of infrastructure and transport services that are important for the accessibility of the region.
In a European context, the EU has initiated a research network called ESPON (European Spatial Planning Observation Network), which in 2004 published a number of different analyses on accessibility based on data from 2001. Calculations have been made in the ESPON analyses for a measure of accessibility to and from all of Europe’s 1 300 regions at the so-called NUTS 3 level (1).
At ESPON an accessibility index has been calculated separately for different transport forms (roads, railway, vessels and aircraft) and a multimodal accessibility index.
The multimodal accessibility index, based on a weighting, shows how many people can be reached from the traffic centre with different means of transport (roads, railway, vessels and aircraft).
The most important conclusions in the
ESPON surveys are:
• accessibility via roads is best in the central parts of Europe (known as the centre-periphery pattern)
• accessibility via railway is best in towns that are nodes in the European high speed network
• accessibility via air is best in regions with large international airports
The figure to the right illustrates the potential (multimodal) accessibility index of Europe in 2006, where the average of Europe is 100.
- Multimodal accessibility potential in EU compared to the Öresund region
Source: ESPON and “Skåne in the centre of Europe and at Sweden’s periphery”, Region Skåne 2008. Comments to the map: The data for analysis, in terms of surface area, is based on geographically smaller regions in Denmark than in Sweden, which is why the red and green areas around Copenhagen are so much smaller than the coarsely defined Skåne.
- Multimodal accessibility in four Nordic capital areas
Source: ESPON and “Skåne in the centre of Europe and at Sweden’s periphery”,<br /> Region Skåne 2008
In general, we can see that the central parts of Europe have particularly high traffic accessibility. This is especially true for the city centres of London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Milano. Beyond this axis of large cities in Central Europe, accessibility is lower, except for isolated urban areas such as the Öresund region. According to ESPON’s accessibility analyses, the reason for this pattern is because the large cities of central Europe are closely tied to the general European highway and high-speed rail network, and they have localised airports with a very comprehensive international network. The Öresund region, Barcelona and Warsaw are examples of metropolitan regions that have relatively high accessibility, largely due to their international airports.
In the Interreg-project ”Infrastructure and urban development” (IBU) (2) some of the data from the ESPON studies has been extracted and further processed. The table above illustrates accessibility to and from selected metropolitan regions with an accessibility index where the European average is 100. Metropolitan regions are also ranked according to the accessibility index for all the 1 300 regions in the ESPON studies to show the relative accessibility compared to the other European regions.
- Accessibility Index and ranking of selected European regions, 2001
Source: IBU 2/COWI, 2009a
In the table it is displayed that the Öresund region is ranked at number 106 in Europe, but that the region has the best multimodal accessibility in the Nordic countries, mainly due to Copenhagen’s Kastrup airport. Gothenburg and Oslo share place number 563, while Stockholm is placed at number 739. The Öresund region is thus in the top 10 on the European level concerning international accessibility.
The Öresund region is thus the region in Scandinavia that has the best accessibility, both in terms of passenger transport (by car and train) and freight transport (by truck and railway). However, one exception is the so-called triangle area in Eastern Jutland.
The international gateways for freight transport by sea to and from the Öresund region are via large international harbours such as Rotterdam, Antwerp, and Hamburg. These harbours are hubs for “feeder lines”, branching out to and from the Öresund region. When looking at the aspect of time, the roads to the harbours by truck are good in the Öresund region. The commercial harbours are reached within one hour’s drive from anywhere in the Öresund region. The figure below illustrates the accessibility of the Öresund region compared to some selected regions.
Train service to and from the Öresund region is relatively slow compared to other northern European regions. However, the Stockholm region is an exception. This is partly because the quality of the Danish railway network is generally lower than the standard of neighbouring countries.
- Accessibility index of selected European region in 2001
Source: IBU 2/COWI, 2009a
Accessibility to the region is limited due to toll barriers in the form of transport fees around much of the region. The fee to use these means of transport implies that costs for coming to and going from the region increase, thus lowering accessibility. Ferry connections also contribute to longer travelling times to and from the region for road and railway traffic.
On the one hand, accessibility for direct air connections to the Öresund region, i.e. direct air transport from departure to final destination, has dropped during the period 2001 - 2008. On the other hand, total accessibility for air connections with transfer during the journey has increased at the same time. Consequently, accessibility to the rest of the world has improved, when travelling via a larger European airport. It’s worth noting that more than 85 percent of passengers still fly directly from Copenhagen’s airport to their final destinations - that are mainly in the rest of Europe (3). Air traffic generally plays an important role in the international accessibility to and from the region. Concerning international passenger transport, air transport is a dominating transport mode compared to all other forms of transport; concerning freight transport by air, we see that the transported goods have a much higher value compared with other transport modes.
Up until 2020, the region’s combined international accessibility mainly depends on whether or not Copenhagen’s airport can maintain and increase its status. Even if large investments are made in other forms of transport, they will not the influence the international accessibility to the Öresund region to the extent that air traffic can contribute, regarding travel and transport time.
The above illustrates the potential of international accessibility to and from the Öresund region, which can be supplemented by a description of the real physical traffic flows of persons and goods to and from the region. The following chapter describes the traffic picture of today with the interregional transport of persons and goods, as well as the quality of the physical infrastructure that promotes traffic.
(1) However, in a Danish/Swedish context it is a problem to use the NUTS regions, since most of the detailed breakdown (NUTS3) only corresponds to the former Danish “amter” (counties) and Skåne is presented as only one zone. For that reason, we need to rely on other sources to analyse the more local accessibility in the Öresund region.
(2) ”Infrastructure and urban development” is a project that is financed by Interreg IVA programme during the period 2008-2010 and is coordinated by Region Skåne, Capital Region of Denmark and Region Zealand. More information is available at www.ibu-oresund.dk.
(3) IBU 2/Tetraplan, 2009a
