The Analysis of Spatial-Temporal Evolution of City Accessibility Based on Highway Network in Henan Province in China

Abstract

Accessibility is an important tool to evaluate the maturity of a regional traffic network structure which describes the traffic convenience in the traffic network. The paper defines a new accessibility index by using the resident pop ulation weighted average value of the sum of inverse of the traveling time distance and time threshold coming from ordinary traffic network, and then uses this accessibility index to analyze the spatial-temporal characteristics of Henan highway network, as well as its evolution patterns from 2005 to 2020. The results show that with the expansion and improvement of Henan highway network, city accessibility level has been significantly improved, spatial convergence is obvious, the cities in the north central are always High-High aggregation area, the cities in the south are always Low-Low aggregation area, gradually forming the characteristics of Northwest high and Southeast low, relative balance between East and West. There is some non-conforming phenomenon in highway mileage growth and improvement of the city accessibility levels, but this situation is being weakened, the highway network layout is gradually rationalized, the spatial distribution of city accessibility and that of population are beginning to converge.