Accessibility analysis as an urban planning tool: Gas station location

We apply geo-statistical techniques to find relationships between the
geographic location of urban "Gas Stations" (GS) and operational
features offered by the transport network in Manizales (Colombia). This
research is built upon primary information collected during a period
longer than one year using GPS (more than 18 million data points). The
methodology consists of i) The set-up of the entire urban transport
infrastructure network, ii) The calculation of the average operating
speeds in the links, iii) The calculation of the global average
accessibility offered by the infrastructure network in different
transport modes, iv) The calculation of the Spatial Coverage Index,
area, population and number of houses covered by the curves of travel
time. Graphical results explain the average times invested in reaching a
particular GS, and quantitative comparisons between different types of
stations are studied. Thus, we establish which sectors of the city are
deficient in coverage of this type of activity. The overall results
reveal the possibility of reaching a GS in Manizales in an average
travel time between 4 and 22 min.