Determination of walk access distance to urban ferry-boat piers in Istanbul

Cities and metropolitan areas are the centers of diverse activities, which require efficient and convenient transportation of persons and goods. It is often said that transportation is the lifeblood of cities. All over the world, as the population is growing, the daily needs of life are increasing, similarly. The growth of population follows issues such as economic viability, environmental impacts, regional pattern development. In a developing society, people try to improve the life quality and reach their daily activities. With regard to this, they use public or private transportation systems according to their certain goals. The high density of activities makes it possible and necessary that high capacity modes, such as bus, light rail, metro, and maritime, have to be used because they are more economical, more energy efficient and occupies less space than private cars. Furthermore, the public transportation modes provide service for everybody, while cars can only be used by those who own and can drive them. Thus, cities need and benefit from public transportation services, which offer greater mobility for the entire population. Walking is one of the most important transportation modes that transportation planners should consider because of its attractiveness and ease of accessibility. Given the presence of a safe network and convenient pedestrian facilities, as well as the availability of probable destinations within walking distance of one's trip origin, walking can be the best mode for a variety of short trips, such as school trips, running errands, and recreational and exercise trips. Even though there are lots of mode choices to reach transit stations commuters try to reach a transportation station by walking if the access distance is short. This access distance, from the residences or business centers to the station, is accepted around 300-400 meters for buses and around 700-800 meters for subways and trams, which might be different in various countries due to the local conditions. The aim of this study is to determine the walk access distance to urban ferry boat piers and examine the relationship between walk access distance and different socioeconomic characteristics of users in Istanbul. Chapter one of this thesis includes the motivation, objectives, and organization. Chapter two contains the literature review and past studies about walk access distance and transit accessibility. Chapter three contains a brief information about public transportation in Istanbul and chapter four comprises the case study. Finally, chapter five is the conclusion chapter. In order to find the relationship between walk access distance and socioeconomic characteristics of passengers, a survey was conducted at five different inner-city passenger ferry-boat piers in Istanbul, Turkey. The socioeconomic characteristics of commuters used in this study are the gender, the age which is divided into three groups; under 25, 25-65, and more than 65 years old, availability of car in the household, income; divided into five groups, and purpose of travel; divided into two groups. The groups of income are divided based on the minimum wage in Turkey, which is approximately 1500 Turkish Lira (TL). The purpose of the journey is divided based on the passenger's activities into two groups; obligatory and non-obligatory trips. To investigate the distribution of the dataset at each ferry-boat piers, Chi-Square, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, and Anderson-Darling tests were implemented. Furthermore, to determine the differences in statistical effects of each variable groups Kruskal-Wallis H test and Mann-Whitney U test were done. The results of Kruskal-Wallis H and Mann-Whitney U tests showed that there is no statistical difference between the purpose of travel and the availability of car in the household groups on walk access distances. However, there is a statistical difference between the gender and the profession of passenger groups in term of walk access distance. With regard to peoples' answers to the question "How long does it take to walk from their origin or destination point to the pier?" and by using the average walking speeds given in the "Urban Roads-Design criteria on sidewalks and pedestrian areas" (TS 12174), the duration converted to distance. Hence, by measuring the real distance from google maps, we tried to estimate how many of passengers guess their walking distance accurately. In addition, regression analyses were accomplished in order to determine the relationship between different considered variables and walk access distance of passengers.