Analysis on traffic accessibility of worst-hit areas in Sichuan by the May 12th Wenchuan Earthquake

Accessibility of regional traffic in the worst-hit areas of Sichuan should be viewed with some concern. The difficulty of disaster relief work in May 12th Earthquake had showed unsubstantial traffic condition of the disaster area. Approach of weighted average travel time is adopted in this paper to calculate accessibility of 3 main traffic manners, i.e. highway, railway and aviation, and their integrative accessibility in 36 counties of the area, relation between integrative accessibility and regional economy development are analyzed, and suggestions are presented for reconstruction of traffic network in the area after the disaster. It is indicated that highway has the best accessibility, aviation takes second place, while railway takes the worst. Accessibility of each manner presents increase by degrees from the central city Chengdu to peripheral counties, consistent with distribution of main lines of traffic, and has logarithm relation with level of regional economy development. In order to harmonize the relation between accessibility and regional economy development, accessibility of marginal area should be enhanced with emphasis in the reconstruction after the disaster.