Rail Catchment Analysis in the Greater Dublin Area

This paper sets out to study the relevance of techniques used in Irish planning to determine walking catchments of rail corridors and identify the implications of this for the planning system. Within Irish Planning the Euclidean method (a circle on a map) tends to be the most accepted means of determining a rail station’s walking catchment and assumes a walkable distance of 1km to all stations as set out in Department of Environment Heritage and Local Government (DoEHLG) guidelines, 2009. Research shows that there is limited literature available concerning the relevance of the method and the measurements used in Ireland. The study consists of a user survey being undertaken at 8 rail stations in Dublin, with stations on both a heavy rail and a light rail system, the Dart and Luas respectively .The bulk of the research consists of questionnaire and observational surveys being carried out at each station. Detailed analysis of results provided the following findings and conclusions:  Different travel patterns appeared between people accessing heavy rail transit (HRT) and those accessing light rail transit (LRT);  Walking catchments are significantly affected by the provision of other competing transit networks and the distance of a station relative to the urban centre;  1km is not an overriding walking distance that can be applied to every rail network;  The ArcGIS Network approach of mapping real walking catchments is a much more effective method than the more commonly used Euclidean method.