Sustainable urban transportation performance in Ankara: A comparative study

Abstract

Urban mobility is increasing rapidly due to the increasing population, number of motor vehicles and economic developments in Türkiye. Private vehicles are given priority in ur-ban transportation policies and practices in metropolitan municipalities. Therefore, prob-lems such as traffic congestion, delays, air pollution, noise, improper land use, traffic ac-cidents and decrease quality of life are experienced. Although sustainable transportation is generally referred to with air pollution, global warming and climate change; It refers to a wide transportation structure that is sustainable in terms of economic, social and envi-ronmental effects. In this study, Ankara's sustainable urban transportation performance was compared with İstanbul, İzmir, Konya and Antalya, using the Sustainable Urban Transportation Index (SURKENT), which was previously developed by the author. In SURKENT, 15 sub-indicators are defined under 4 main indicators. The main indicators are Environmental Performance (EP), Transportation Performance (TP), Energy Perfor-mance (EnP) and Municipality Governance Performance (MGP). 4 sub-indicators were used under Environmental Performance, 7 under Transportation Performance, 2 under Energy Performance and 2 sub-indicators under Municipality Governance Performance. Minimum-maximum normalization was used for sub-indicators containing quantitative data, and 0-100 scoring was used for qualitative data. The ranking of cities with the high-est sustainable urban transportation performance was found as follows: İstanbul, İzmir, Konya, Ankara, Antalya. Ankara; it is 3rd in EP, 3rd in TP, 5th in EnP and 2nd in MGP.