Measuring Service Gaps and Spatial Inequalities in Public Transit Access to Essential Urban Services: Evidence from Nagpur, India

In rapidly urbanising Indian cities, concerns regarding unequal access to essential urban services through public transport systems have intensified. Ensuring equitable access to healthcare, education, green spaces, and other essential services remains a key challenge in urban transport planning. However, existing studies often lack integrated approaches that jointly consider population needs, service provision, and the structure of the public transport network when evaluating accessibility. This study develops a public transit network-based spatial accessibility framework to assess accessibility to essential urban services. The framework integrates population-based service needs and capacity-weighted facility locations to estimate service accessibility potential, and then uses public transport network data to evaluate transit provision and quantify accessibility disparities by comparing these components. A multi-scale hexagonal spatial grid system estimates spatial variation, and distance-decay effects are incorporated using a floating catchment approach. Application of this framework in a rapidly growing Indian city – Nagpur – reveals significant spatial disparities in public transport access to essential urban services. The findings show high accessibility in central areas, whereas peripheral zones remain deficient. Inequalities are more pronounced in higher education facilities and green open spaces than in healthcare and schooling services. Disparities become more aggregated at a coarser scale, highlighting sensitivity to spatial resolution. The proposed framework offers insights for public transit network route prioritisation, informs new policy drafting, and identifies future service expansion zones to improve equitable access to essential urban services in rapidly growing urban areas.