Study of the regional accessibility calculation by income class based on utility-based accessibility

With the Republic of Korea facing many challenges in urban housing development, the Korean government has implemented various public housing policies to stabilise the residential life of low-income households. While the government has established different housing policies for each household income class, there is a lack of research on rational accessibility models that consider the characteristics of each income class. Therefore, this study constructed an accessibility calculation model that reflects the transportation characteristics of various household income classes and used it to calculate the accessibility of each area and the household location of each income class. The results demonstrated limited difference in accessibility between income classes in Seoul; however, in Incheon and Gyeonggi Province, high-income accessibility was lower than low-income accessibility. It was also confirmed that the low-income households were more likely to be located in areas of low accessibility, while middle and high-income households were more likely to be located in areas of high accessibility. The main contributions of this study are as follows. First, it systematically derives the traffic characteristics by income class and uses these to calculate accessibility. Second, it presents a more reasonable model for calculating accessibility than the nominal model used in government policy decisions. Finally, it evaluates household location by income class based on the accessibility calculated in this study.