Methodology
The information that we needed to gather to test hypothesis two, is count how many cars and pedestrians went past, count the number of car spaces in the shopping centres. The reason why I had to count how many car parking spaces were used is because it gave me an idea of how many people used these shopping centres and also if the shopping centre was east to access. We needed to collect information about public transport that serves the area. We collected this information by looking at bus route and train route maps. All three shopping centres are within walking distance from our school. The first day we visited School Road and the second day we visited Fox Hollies Road and Acocks Green. When we got to our destinations we split up in to small groups, a few of us counted the numbers of cars went past, and counted the number of pedestrians that went past. I found out about the bus routes and train routes by going on the internet.
After collecting our data we neatly copied it up and for each shopping centre we created graphs to show the data.
Graphs
Figure 2
Figure 3
Results Analysis
I believe that the hypothesis is correct and Acocks Green is the most accessible, as shown in the three areas that we have studied. The larger area of Acocks Green has better access by public transport and also is served by more road links. Figure 1 and 3 shows that Acocks Green is served by ten bus routes and has twelve bus stops and also is near to a train station. There are five major access roads to Acocks green. This information is also shown in figure 1 and 3. There is parking provision for 297 cars in official car parks which make the area attractive to people travelling in by car; this is shown in figure 2.
The medium sized area is Fox Hollies. This has four bus routes and eight bus stops and is near to a train station (as shown in figure 1 and 3). There are four access roads (shown in fig 1 and 3) and the traffic count is lower than in Acocks Green (as shown in figure 1). There is parking provision for 113 cars, which is shown in figure 1 and 3.
The third area School Road is the smallest area. It has three bus routes and two bus stops and no train stations. There are three access roads. It is also the area with the least traffic account. These are all shown in figure 1 and 3. There are 26 parking spaces so the area is not very suited to people driving to the area (shown in figure 1 and 3).
Overall, the most accessible shopping centre out of the three is Acocks Green.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the hypothesis ‘The larger the shopping centre the greater the access.’ I believe that this hypothesis is true because the data that I collected proves this. Acocks Green is the largest shopping centre out of the three shopping centres; from the results it tells us that Acocks has the greater access than Fox Hollies and School Road, so it is more likely for customers to shop at Acocks Green. This is because it has a lot of car parking spaces and bus services along with a train station near the shopping centre. It makes it easier for the customers who are travelling by car, bus or train to access the shopping centre.
School road is the smallest shopping centre out of the three and it has the least car parking access out of the three. Fox Hollies has the most access road than Acocks Green and School Road. Figure 6 shows us that more people travelled by car to Acocks Green than they did to Fox Hollies, even though Fox Hollies has more access roads. The reason for this might be that the shopping centre is smaller and it doesn’t have as many high order shops as Acocks Green.
The size of the shopping centre has an affect on the access. The larger the shopping centre the greater the access, this is shown in my data that I have collected. My prediction was correct that Acocks Green would have the greatest access out of Fox Hollies and School Road. I think there are two most important type of access one is by car, this is because there are many roads, but it can get congested sometimes. The second one is by bus as there are many bus routes leading into Acocks Green, the access is good.
Evaluation
If I was to improve my results I could visit more shopping centres or I could collect my data differently .I could add more detail to my results by collecting more data and compare different shopping centres with each other and taking the results at different times in the day. As we only went to visit the centres during the middle of the week and for half a day, next time we could visit the different shopping centres at different times of the day but also different days of the week or even the weekends, to get a more accurate and precise result. This is because most people are at work during the week, and only have time to shop after work or at weekends. So if we conducted the questionnaire on a different day of the week and at a different time, we would have got completely different results than we have.
