Public Transportation and Accessibility to Education Centers in Maldonado, Uruguay

This article presents a study of public transportation and accessibility to public services in Maldonado, Uruguay. Accessibility is a crucial concept in nowadays smart cities, to guarantee a proper mobility, citizen participation in social, economic, and cultural activities, and an overall good quality of life. Several data sources are studied and processed to characterize the accessibility provided by the public transportation system of Maldonado to public services, specifically to education centers. A matrix of travel times by public transportation is computed and used to define a flexible accessibility indicator to reach destinations of interest. Finally, an interactive visualization tool is developed to graphically display the computed information. The accessibility indicator constitutes an input for the decision-making of the transportation authorities of the studied area, as well as it allows identifying potential inequity situations.