Public transport accessibility indicators to urban and regional services in Great Britain.

Public transport accessibility to urban and regional services has been found to relate to various social and economic processes, such as unemployment, transport mode choice, property prices, and public health. A frequent type of measures representing accessibility are location-based. While these offer advantages, like flexibility and ease of interpretation, their estimation usually requires specialized skills and substantial computational resources. To lower these barriers, we have prepared a suite of accessibility indicators for key services across Great Britain at a spatially disaggregated level. The dataset includes ready-to-use public transport accessibility indicators for employment, general practitioners (GP, or family physician), hospitals, grocery stores, supermarkets, primary and secondary schools, and urban centres. It also includes the raw travel time matrix from each origin to every potential destination, a primary input for such indicator estimation. Altogether, this resource offers various levels of application, from direct input into a range of research topics to the foundation for creating comprehensive custom indicators.

Did air pollution continue to affect bike share usage in Seoul during the COVID-19 pandemic?

INTRODUCTION: The role of cycling has become more important in the urban transport system during the Covid-19 pandemic. As public transport passengers have tried to avoid crowded vehicles due to safety concerns, a rapid surge of cycling activities has been noted in many countries. This implies that more cyclists might be exposed to air pollution, potentially leading to health problems in cities like Seoul where the level of air pollution is high. METHODS: We utilised three years of bike sharing programme (Ddareungi) data in Seoul and time series models to examine the changes in the relationship between particulate concentration (PM2.5) and total daily cycling duration before and during the pandemic. RESULTS: We find that cyclists reacted less to the PM2.5 level during the pandemic, potentially due to the lack of covid-secure travel modes. Specifically, our results show significant negative associations between concentrations of PM2.5 and total daily cycling duration before the pandemic (year 2018 and 2019). However, this association became insignificant in 2020. CONCLUSIONS: Building comprehensive cycling infrastructure that can reduce air pollution exposure of cyclists and improving air quality alert systems could help build a more resilient city for the future.

The role of young users in determining long-term care expenditure in Norway.

AIMS: In Norway, it is the responsibility of the country's 429 municipalities to provide long term care (LTC) services to their residents. Recent years have seen a sharp rise in the number of LTC users under the age of 65. This article aims to explore the effect of this rise on LTC expenditure. METHODS: Panel data models are used on data from municipalities from 1986 to 2011. An instrumental variable approach is also utilized to account for possible endogeneity related to the number of young users. RESULTS: The number of young users appears to have a strong effect on LTC expenditure. There is also evidence of municipalities exercising discretion in defining eligibility criteria for young users in order to limit expenditure. CONCLUSIONS: The rise in the number of young LTC users presents a long-term challenge to the sustainability of LTC financing. The current budgeting system appears to compensate municipalities for expenditure on young LTC users.