Accessibility Network Development for TOD along proposed BRT Corridor in Dhaka (Presentation 853)

Cities in the developing world are faced with a challenge from the transport intensive land use development focused on personalized modes. Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is considered to be one of the most promising alternative city development strategies focusing on use of public transport. However, most of the high capacity public transport projects in cities of developing countries are coming up at a stage where the city corridors are already developed, and therefore, implementation of track based systems are hugely costly. Success of a public transport system depends on accessibility of passengers to its nodes or stations. Field data collected from Gazipur (Dhaka) Bangladesh shows that accessibility to proposed Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) stations depends majorly on the network of access road of different geometry (width), besides its condition and distance of access road from BRT stations. Potential access roads are ranked with a scoring system and in-situ improvements are proposed to yield achievable results. Retrofitting improvement measures can enhance accessibility and safety while causing increased ridership of BRT. To ensure sustainability of public transport (BRT in this case), city needs to provide accessibility to Public Transport nodes, which is a prerequisite to successful TOD.