Public transport quality classes
A standardised rating of how well a location is served by public transport, combining how close the stops are with how often services run.
Public transport quality classes, in German ÖV-Güteklassen, rate how well a given location is served by public transport. The rating combines two things: the distance to the nearest stops, and how frequently services run from them. The result is a class, from very good service to none, that can be mapped across a whole city or region.
The method exists because neither half works alone. A stop within a hundred metres served twice a day is not good public transport access, and an excellent service half an hour away on foot is not either. Quality classes force the two into one number, which is what makes places comparable.
That comparability is the point. Planners use the classes to find underserved areas, to decide where development should go because the service already exists, and to show what a proposed service change would do to access. Because the method is standardised, a class in one region means the same thing as a class in another, which a locally invented score never does. In GOAT the tool is called ÖV-Güteklassen in both languages.