Abstract
For many reasons, public transport in Japanese provincial cities can be considered more important than ever. To help effectively maintain and/or improve the public transport, it is necessary to precisely appraise the level of accessibility provided by the transport mode. It appears to be generally assumed that such appraisal requires expensive GIS software and spatial data. However, it may not be the case because free software, web services, and data that may alternatively be used for the appraisal are becoming increasingly available. This paper demonstrates that it is actually possible to appraise the level of accessibility provided by public transport in Japanese provincial cities only by using free software, web services, and data. Specifically, we use QGIS, Google Maps Distance Matrix API, and digital national land information data together with some Python coding, and show how to investigate the level of accessibility for those who use the bus system in Hirosaki-shi, Aomori.
