University of California Transportation Center

By now measures of employment "access" and "potential" have been widely diffused in the literature on regional economics and transport planning. Pooler (1995) gives a brief review of accessibility measures, indicating that these concepts date back to the 1930s. According to standard economic intuition, the employment access of a residential area increases with its proximity to concentrations of employment opportunities. The various indices of accessibility which have been proposed merely formalize and quantify this notion.