Public transport availability in Wales: analysing the availability of railways stations and rail services

This paper introduces initial work on the availability of railway stations and rail services in Wales. It investigates how accessible the rail network is to 193 key settlements using the concept of transport availability – the degree to which railway stations can be accessed based on a variety of measures such as proximity, transport provision, frequency of service and amenities. The work provides a classification of stations in Wales and railway availability scores for the settlements in Wales. These scores are analysed in relation to socio-economic and demographic settlement characteristics to understand the spatial variation in railway accessibility.