Accessibility of Public Services in Irbid, Jordan

Abstract

The city of Irbid, Jordon, is divided into 17 zones to examine the accessibility of the locations of the public facilities by zone. The educational, health, postal, mosque, public park, fire, police, library and bank services in Irbid are analyzed, as is the accessibility to public transport, to know how good the location of these facilities is to the public. A descriptive measure, rather than a quantitative one, is used in the analysis. A circle of the maximum walking distance is drawn around each facility representing the service area for that facility, and zones ranging from completely served by these facilities to completely unserved are described. The analysis shows that the central zones had redundant services for many uses, while other zones were partially served or even unserved. The public transport network compensated for the majority of the deficiencies in accessibility over the zones. The analysis shows that the availability of good services tends to vary inversely with the needs of the population served.