Accessibility from a European perspective
Good accessibility, in the sense that many people can visit a region, is for the most part limited to the larger agglomerations. Accessibility through roads is characterised by a distinctive centre-periphery pattern, where Europe’s central sections have significantly greater accessibility than the peripheral sections. Places connected to the European high speed network have the best access by rail. Larger urban areas with large international airports have good access by air. The Öresund region has the Nordic countries’ best multimodal accessibility.
The EU initiated research network for spatial analyses, ESPON (European Spatial Planning Observation Network), has devised a measurement for European regional accessibility. The accessibility of the different means of transport (road, rail, water and air) have been weighed together into a multimodal accessibility index. Accessibility calculations are not based on how a place is actually reached or who is actually being reached but rather with how many could be reached. This is called the accessibility potential. Copenhagen ranked the highest of all regions in the Nordic countries and Skåne shared the 236th place, which is in the best fifth of Europe when ranked among the more than 1 300 regions (NUTS 3) in Europe included in the ESPON programme. In that context, Stockholm is ranked to share the 740th place.
- Multimodal accessibility potential in EU compared to the Öresund region
Source: ESPON and “Skåne in the centre of Europe and at Sweden’s periphery”, Region Skåne 2008. Comments to the map: The data for analysis, in terms of surface area, is based on geographically smaller regions in Denmark than in Sweden, which is why the red and green areas around Copenhagen are so much smaller than the coarsely defined Skåne.
The map of Europe on the next page shows in blue the EU regions where the multimodal accessibility potential is more than 10 percent lower than Skåne; those regions that are roughly the same as Skåne are in green. The red colour indicates those few regions mainly within the “Pentagon”, Europe’s economic centre extending among five cities: London, Hamburg, Munich, Milan and Paris where accessibility is considerably better than in the Öresund region. A more precise look at the nearest comparable neighbours shows the situation to be equally advantageous on the local level.
- Multimodal accessibility in four Nordic capital areas
Source: ESPON and “Skåne in the centre of Europe and at Sweden’s periphery”,<br /> Region Skåne 2008
The map of the Nordic capital cities on the next page shows the corresponding accessibility potential for the municipalities of four Nordic capitals. Here accessibility in the municipalities is compared to the EU 27 average, as derived from the information above. Comparison at the local level makes apparent larger intraregional differences in the Öresund region than in Stockholm, Helsinki or Oslo. Eastern Skåne has an accessibility potential that is near to or under half of the EU average. When measuring accessibility by road, rail or air each taken separately it is clear that accessibility by the road network is highly concentrated to the core of Europe. Accessibility by rail also shows a strong concentration to the core of Europe but cities along the high speed train lines also stand out. So cities outside the core but near to a high speed train station can have good European accessibility by rail. Proximity to Kastrup airport is the primary decisive factor for the Öresund region’s position in the multimodal accessibility index. Most cities outside the core of Europe that have notably good multimodal accessibility do so because of their proximity to an internationally important airport.
