Mobility · Access to transport
How close is public transport to us?
City plans often measure closeness to public transport with two thresholds: 400 metres — about a 5-minute walk — and 800 metres, about 10 minutes. Sofiaplan calculated these zones along the actual street network, not as the crow flies. What do they show, and where does the map fall short?
179 km²
within 400 m of a stop (about a 5-minute walk)
318 km²
within 800 m of a stop (about a 10-minute walk)
52 of 198
metro entrances are marked as wheelchair accessible
A 5- or 10-minute walk?
The map shows the two zones on top of each other: the denser colour is the 400 m zone, the lighter one the 800 m zone. Doubling the acceptable distance adds another 139 km² — the zone grows by 78%. Select a zone to see its attributes. The data is current as of 1 October 2020.
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Is it close if you can’t use stairs?
Distance to a stop is only half the question. The metro entrances layer records, for each entrance, whether it is accessible for wheelchair users. The data is current as of 2 April 2020 — before Line 3 opened.
198 entrances at 33 metro stations
- 52 marked as accessible
- 2 with limited access
- 24 marked as not accessible
- 120 with no information
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15 of 33 stations have no entrance marked as accessible: Академик Александър Теодор, Александър Малинов, Бели дунав, Бизнес парк, Княгиня Мария Луиза, Летище София, Ломско шосе, Младост I, Младост III, Сердика, Сливница, Софийска Света гора, Фр. Жолио-Кюри, Хан Кубрат, Централна ЖП гара. That doesn’t mean the station is inaccessible — for most of them the information simply hasn’t been filled in.
What can we conclude?
The data shows where stops can be reached on foot and lets us compare the two thresholds. It does not show how often services run, how many people live in the zones, or whether everyone can actually reach the platform.
The biggest gap is accessibility: 120 of 198 entrances have no information. Filling in that field and linking the zones to the current GTFS timetable and population data would turn the map from “how close” into “how well served” we are.