Daily travel behavior of citizens aged between 12 and 42 years old in Istanbul metropolitan area

This thesis carries out study on Travel Behavior of Istanbul Metropolitan citizens aged between 12 and 42, which are the majority of daily passengers in the city, for years 2012 and 2006. The focus of the study is on mode choice trend of the respondents. The study aims to comprehend the relationship between different socio-demographic variables and mode choice of the citizens. The purpose of this study is to understand daily travel behavior of Istanbul's citizens. Understanding the travel behavior of citizen will provide ground for more efficient transportation planning and policies in the future. The study implements descriptive analysis to achieve the objectives of the research. Age, gender, education level, study status, employment status, employment sector, income and car ownership are the independent variables studied in the research. The researcher presume that socio-demographic variables have significant influence on mode choice of the citizens more than spatial characteristics of the city. Four transportation modes including Walk, Service, Private Car and Public Transportation are the main modes in the study. The study explores the first three trips made by the citizens and studies the frequency and mode distribution of the citizens based on the independent variables. The researcher does the analysis for two data sets from two different years and at the end, she does compare the change trend in mode choice of the citizens by the pass of time. Based on the results gained form the analysis in the study, the researcher recommends that future researches investigate the cause of changes in mode trend of the groups that Private Car usage has been increased among them and those groups that do not use active or sustainable transportation frequently. Besides, she does recommend that future planning decision take the analysis of mode choice of the citizens into consideration to result in more efficient and successful planning. The researcher recommends that future studies should investigate the increase in private car usage for high-income groups in year 2012 compared to 2006, to understand the causes of this increase. As well, walk decrease in recent years, specially it should be investigated that why men do not use public transportation as much as women do and what should be implemented to encourage them to use public transportation as a daily transportation mode. By understanding the travel behavior of the citizens the researcher suppose that it will be useful to make efficient transportation planning based on the real situation.