Geomatics techniques to evaluate bus service coverage : a case study on Nasiriyah, Iraq

Abstract EN

In this paper, geomatics techniques were used to collect, build, and analyze a geo-database of the bus transport network.

Spatial identification of bus routes and bus stops using GPS was performed using GIS to link and analyze the necessary metadata with the available spatial data.

The criteria used to assess bus service coverage were as follows: the spatial coverage in terms of the walking distance to the transport service, the adequacy of the transport network length, and extent of supply availability of the bus transport system.

The results revealed that the population “living in 47% of the city’s urban area” could arrive at a transport service within a period of less than 5 minutes (in other words, a walking distance of less than 400 m), which is the typical time to arrival.

Furthermore, the study concluded that the current length of the transport network is sufficient to provide typical spatial coverage for the city's entire urban area if redistributed.