A job accessibility index to evaluate employment impacts in isolated regions now restored to the rail network

Restoration of rail links to rural or isolated regions may generate wider economic impacts by improving employment accessibility. An applicable simplified index is developed based on potential job opportunities, measuring location advantage with respect to the job market. A gravity-based approach assesses the accessibility of the workforce in each location to opportunities in all other locations, where fewer or more distant opportunities provide diminishing influence. Specific issues are the practicability of commuting due to the infrequency of public transport to a limited range of destinations, and the types of job available at each location. Consequently, to reflect these effects in a more remote context, measures representing proximity and service frequency were incorporated into the index, with allowance for skills matching with a new approach in closer matching of occupations between different locations. Comparing the accessibility index by location over the intervention period highlighted those areas most impacted by infrastructure changes. Applying the rail intervention of the Stirling-Alloa line as a case study illustrated that not accounting for local job skills matching tends to overestimate the attraction factor of job opportunities, and the wider difference when the job index is based on generalised cost suggests that generalised cost of travel including the value of time is more of an impediment than actual travelling time.