Tram Expansion Effects on Reaching the City Centres—Case Study of Tampere and Braunschweig

This manuscript is based on cooperation between the universities in Tampere, Finland and Braunschweig, Germany. New tram lines are being built or extended in both cities to provide better connections to public transportation and increase accessibility. This research presents case studies from each city that have successfully increased public transport (PT) ridership during recent years. The aim of this study is to compare and analyse the effects of tram expansion projects in Tampere and Braunschweig from the public transport network users’ viewpoint. These cities were selected because they are of similar size in terms of population and have similar modal shares of PT. Changes in accessibility to the city centres were analysed considering the tramline extensions. This was determined by calculating the travel time differences of the current network and the future network for both cities. For this total travel time, the ArcGIS Pro Service Area Tool was used to calculate the time taken to reach every grid of the investigation areas. The results vary due to the tram expansion and changes in the existing bus network.