National Audit Office launches transport accessibility tool

The National Audit Office (NAO) has published an interactive tool that presents and compares transport accessibility to key local services across England.

The NAO is the UK’s independent public spending watchdog which holds Parliament to account to help improve public services.

The tool combines the latest available national journey time data with other publicly available data to explore access to different types of services by local public transport.

The NAO's transport accessibility tool explores whether, when combined with rurality and deprivation, and the quality of the services themselves, variation in journey times is compounding unequal access to services in England.

The tool has been designed to add insight, share knowledge and contribute to discussion around local transport provision and service delivery.

The NAO said it demonstrates new insights available to the Government through use and analysis of its data.

This tool can be used to explore:

1. Comparisons of local places' overall transport accessibility to the national average.
2. Average public transport journey times to seven key services and amenities in a given local area. Namely, schools (primary and secondary), further education establishments, acute hospital trusts, GP surgeries, large employment centres, and town centres at local authority, parliamentary constituency, local enterprise partnership (LEP) and clinical commissioning group (CCG) level.
3. Public transport journey times to health and education services rated good and outstanding, as well as the difference in journey time to reach a good or outstanding rated service, compared to a service with any quality rating.
4. Charts which compare public transport journey times with metrics of deprivation and rurality to look at the interplay between transport accessibility, rurality and deprivation.