Most urban transport projects havefocused on improving the ability of citizens to move freelyand swiftly about the city. Typically, that ability has beenmeasured by the share of the population living within, say,0.5 kilometer of a transit stop, or the maximum traveldistance per unit of time, or the amount of transportationinfrastructure in a city. Using such ‘proximity’ measures tomonitor urban mobility has led to congested highway networksand public transit systems that have failed to bring jobsand services within the practical reach of residents,especially the poor. These proximity-based measuresrepresent indirect attempts to capture the real objective oftransit systems: the accessibility of opportunities. Newtechnologies and richer databases now make accessibility,the number of jobs, health facilities, schools, and otheressential services that are available without a car in, say,30–75 minutes, a practical criterion for judging the stateof mobility and for designing ways to improve it. Using theaccessibility criterion will be critical to achieving SDG11, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal to‘make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe,resilient and sustainable.’
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