Date

2014

Author

Özgür Cevher, Özge

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Investments in rail systems have been increasing throughout the world. This is mainly because public transport is considered to be a sustainable transport mode and the only viable alternative to the car in most urban areas where journeys are too long to be made by non-motorized modes of transport, such as walking and cycling. Amongst public transport modes, urban rail systems are particularly favored by planners since it is believed that rail systems can be effective in attracting car users to public transport. However, an urban rail investment may not be sufficient alone to influence travel behavior and choice of mode. There are many studies that argue that the most powerful tool to change people’s travel behavior is by urban planning and urban design. Urban form can make people dependent on car-usage or it can encourage the usage of sustainable modes of transport. Investing in public transit infrastructure is not enough to create a shift towards public transport; such an investment has to be complemented by urban design strategies that create public-transport friendly and walkable urban environments with a view to foster the use of these modes. Studies that review the performance of urban rail systems also support the above argument. These studies generally result in two propositions: firstly, these investments should be supported by transport policies that restrict car usage in cities while improving public transport; and secondly these investments should be supported with land-use planning and urban design policies in order to reduce car-dependency and create neighborhood development patterns that support more usage of public transport.. Resting on these two vast areas of research in the literature, this study builds on the argument that certain land-use planning approaches and urban design strategies are required to make the vicinity of transit stations less car-dependent, more walkable and more transit-friendly in order to increase public transport usage. The study aims at understanding the link between station area design and transit usage. The analysis focuses on Ankara and intends to find out the extent to which the built environments around selected Ankara Metro and Ankaray transit stations are “transit encouraging” neighborhoods and whether there is a link between station-area design and the usage of these urban rail stations. In the literature, density, diversity and connectivity are found to be essential factors in increasing the usage of particular rail transit stations. From this point of view, in the study these parameters have been analyzed in three different scales as macro (Ankara), meso (existing rail transit corridors) and micro (selected rail transit station areas). Principally, the link between station area design and the transit usage is assessed in the study. It is found that in the context of Ankara, while connectivity seems to have an effect of transit usage for the suburban development corridor that the Ankara Metro serves, overall, spatial parameters are not able to explain the differences in the usage of stations, and that public transport integration is the most important factor that affects the usage of rail transit systems in Ankara. It is also found that context specific results, i.e. the findings for the Metro and Ankaray corridor separately, have been different than the overall analysis results and hence the analysis of each corridor separately would give more insights about the systems and their relation with the urban environment. Nevertheless, the study shows that density is an important factor in newly developing areas to support urban rail usage, as would be expected, and that connectivity parameters such as lighting, interface with parking, ease of pedestrian crossing, landscaping, flat terrain, and sidewalks should be well developed in the suburban. Above all, integrated transport policies should be well planned and implemented throughout the city.

Subject Keywords

Local transit., Local transit accessibility., Urban transportation., Urban transportation

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12618370/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/24308

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis