Accessibility of Cities in European Infrastructure Networks; a Comparison of Approaches

This paper deals with the importance of accessibility as a factor influencing locational decions of firms at a European level. A comparative analysis will be carried out of studies dealing with this issue. Attention will be paid among others to the importance of international accessibility in comparison with the quality of local transport infrastructure. Also, the importance of non-transport factors (e.g. quality of office space or cost of labour) will be discussed. In the second part of the paper we will compare the results of three recent studies on the accessibility of about 40 European cities : - Erlandsson and Tornqvist, who measure the total number of people who can be visited from a certain city on a return trip in one day with a duration of stay of at least four hours - Healey and Baker, who present subjective estimates of experts on the accessibility of European cities - Bruinsma and Rietveld who compute accessibility measures based on a gravity type model.