Creating a national classification of the level of bus service provision: A case study of Wales

There is a lack of research on public transport availability (PTA) at the national level. As the majority of work focuses on intra-regional and intra-city service provision, there is little understanding on how settlements are connected by PTA across large areas. K-means cluster analysis is used to classify the level of bus service provision for the 193 principal settlements in Wales. Bus service provision was modelled using OpenTripPlanner, Traveline National Dataset, and National Public Transport Access Nodes dataset. The 8 resulting clusters were analysed in relation to socio-economic and demographic characteristics and a classification of bus service provision is presented.