Different measures of cycling accessibility have been widely introduced in transportation planning. However, those measurements are mainly restricted by the availability of travel behavior data. In addition, there has been limited comprehensive research on the importance of cycling accessibility to destinations based on the travel time or distance. In this paper, a new index for measuring bikeability in metropolitan areas is introduced. A Cycling Accessibility Index (CAI) is developed for quantifying cycling accessibility within local areas in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. CAI is defined according to gravity-based measures of accessibility. This index measures cycling accessibility levels in terms of diversity of different land uses, number of activities in statistical areas, and the travel impedance between origins and destinations. The Victorian Integrated Survey of Travel and Activity (VISTA) dataset was used to evaluate the index and investigate the association between the cycling accessibility levels and the number of bicycle trips in local areas. The index is assessed by investigating the association between levels of cycling accessibility and the number of bicycle trips in statistical areas. Key findings indicate that there is a significant positive association between bike trips and the CAI.

The number of elderly people as a proportion of the world’s population is growing significantly. Special attention to the accessibility and mobility requirements of this group is needed. The contribution of this paper is a review of travel patterns, mode preferences, infrastructure solutions, accessibility indices, mode choice models and datasets as they relate to elderly mobility. Key findings highlight the role of residential location characteristics in shaping elderly travel patterns, helping to explain why research on elderly travel has largely relied on case studies to date. The review also summarizes a range of indices that have been developed to measure public transport and walking accessibility among the elderly, including distance and time-based methods. Future research should consider the dominance of private transport in facilitating elderly mobility and its implications for cities experiencing an aging population.

Cities are socio-spatially patterned, yet few researchers have explored the association between walkability and house prices by neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage, highlighting issues about housing affordability, equity, and liveability. We aimed to determine whether walkability and house prices differed by neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage. To test this, we used linear regression models of house prices stratified by quintiles of neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantage at the suburb level in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia on walkability and its components (street connectivity, dwelling density, and destination access), and public transit access. Walkability was positively associated with house prices. In the stratified regressions, destination accessibility was associated with higher house prices whilst having poor access to transit was negatively associated with house prices. The association between walkability and house prices was weakest for the most disadvantaged areas, suggesting that houses in these areas were more affordable due, in part, to a lack of amenity. Future planning could redress the relationship between walkability and house prices by making new areas walkable. Increasing densities in outer suburban areas would improve destination and transit access, and in established areas, inclusionary zoning policies could help ensure accessibility to social and affordable housing in amenity-rich areas redressing built environment inequities.