Elsevier

Journal of Transport Geography

Volume 54, June 2016, Pages 476-487
Journal of Transport Geography

LRT and street tram policies and implementation in turkish cities

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2015.10.004Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Eight Turkish cities (other than the three largest cities) and their LRT/tramway systems are critically assessed.

  • Planning, financing and operational performance of LRT/tramways are analysed within the context of an international “railway renaissance”.

  • Two cities are selected as detailed case studies to demonstrate both successful and problematic characteristics of implementation.

  • Based on the practices in these eight cities, suggestions for successful implementation of urban rail policies (including PPP financing) are distilled.

Abstract

Urban transport sustainability policies aim to encourage a greater use of public transport and an improvement in service provision. However, governments are usually strapped for capital investment funds, and there are planning and financing problems that either delay LRT and street tramway improvements and/or hinder their utilisation. During the past decade, rail developments have dominated Turkish urban and national transport policies: many new lines have been opened and others are under construction. Turkey now has eight cities with LRT or tramway lines (in addition to the three major cities of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir). Based on analyses of unpublished data from transport master plans, and from interviews conducted with planning experts who worked on such master plans, and from political leaders, this paper assesses how effectively these smaller cities have planned and financed their LRT and trams, and how efficiently they are operated. How well Turkey performs with its urban LRT and tramway developments within the context of an international “railway renaissance” is also critically assessed. In Turkey, the PPP modality of financing (mostly in the form of BOT) is favoured for highway investment whereas many of the railway projects still require international loans. A greater role for the private sector in Turkey is recommended to reinforce this embryonic railway renaissance and to ensure greater operational and financial sustainability.

Introduction

From 2000 onwards, Turkey started to invest in railways (both urban and national rail networks) at an accelerating pace. The current development plans and policies by the government envisage further network extensions, increases in rail patronage, and the further development and modernisation of the railway sector (Turkish State Railways, 2013, Ministry of Development, 2013). The Turkish State Railways initiated the first high-speed rail construction program in 2004. The current length of lines in operation are 820 km with 1,105 km under construction and a target of 13,000 km of high-speed rail lines by 2023 (the 100th anniversary year of the Turkish Republic). The central government has initiated a privatisation process and accordingly has an economic restructuring program that aims at adopting Public-Private Partnership (PPP) schemes to the Turkish State Railways and developing a national (inter-urban) rail network. This new regulation is expected to bring more technology transfer and international competition to the whole of the railway sector in Turkey (Nash, 2011, Nash et al., 2013).

These developments in Turkey demonstrate a renaissance in railway policies - as elsewhere in some parts of the world (Loo and Comtois, 2015) - and, thus, for the first time since the early 1960s there is a revival of rail when the dominant transport policy was motorisation and highway expansion throughout the country. The government’s master development plans and policy papers explain the dominant railways policies and underline substantial investments up to 2023. There is also another underpinning technical policy that is leading to this railway renaissance in Turkey that is relevant to the scope of this paper: the Tenth National Development Plan for the period 2014-2018 has reduced the passenger demand requirements for the development of urban rail systems to the extent that the minimum directional and hourly number of passengers is now set as: 7,000 passengers for tramways; 10,000 passengers for LRT (Light Rail Transit); and 15,000 passengers for metro.1

The obvious question to ask is what is the geographical and political impact of this LRT renaissance on the urban development of Turkish cities? We would expect that LRT and street tram networks initially to be implemented in the most populous cities. In the eleven cities with urban rail systems currently in operation (out of a total of eighty one Turkish cities) the total length of lines added from 2000 was 333 km. As might be expected, the major urban rail improvements were in Istanbul, where a total of 111.5 km of metro (including the Euro-Asian Bosporus Strait rail tunnel), LRT and tramway lines have been opened (Alpkokin et al., in press). Our methodology is to undertake a critical review of railway developments in these cities with particular reference to their background planning, financing and operational issues with an aim of assessing the strength of this renaissance and what might be done to support urban light rail policy in the future.

LRT and tramways have cost advantages for construction of underground metro systems and provide higher capacity and better environmental congestion mitigation impacts compared to buses, according to Knowles (1992). However, there are also cases where LRT and tramway plans have been shelved mainly for financing reasons (Knowles, 2007). These are generic issues of implementation worldwide because since the mid-1990s many countries have attempted to build or rebuild their urban railway networks and LRT systems. Many success stories can be found in the literature (Bottoms, 2003, Mandri-Perrot and Menzies, 2010, Olesen, 2014). Nevertheless, there are cases where planning targets were not achieved as anticipated (for example, see Shaw et al., 2003 for UK; Lane, 2008 for the USA; Topp, 1998 for Germany). There remain planning, investment (financing) and operational problems that need to be overcome in the shorter term in many countries.

We critically assess data extracted from the master plans for urban transport, we collect statistics through visits to the municipal divisions in charge of the operation of the railways in Turkish cities, and we conduct interviews with the urban planners, transport planners and elected officials from eight municipalities. The paper deliberately limits its scope to analyses of eight relatively smaller cities in Turkey - in contrast to the three major cities of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir - because we have identified a gap in the Turkish transport literature on such smaller cities. These eight cities are not well known outside of Turkey and have not been subject to any academic transport research. All these eight cities (Adana, Antalya, Bursa, Eskisehir, Gaziantep, Kayseri, Konya and Samsun) operate LRT or tramway lines and seven of them developed their first rail line in the 2000s.

The paper is structured into eight sections as follows. The second and third sections describe the research framework and provide the background urban and railway statistics of eleven Turkish cities with urban rail systems in operation. The next two sections present a critical review of railway developments in eight smaller cities with particular reference to their background planning, decision-making, financing and operational issues. The sixth section is essentially a political discussion on two selected case study cities. The seventh section analyses potential PPP applications. Finally, section eight concludes the findings with an extended discussion about the railway renaissance in Turkey and suggestions as to how best to maintain the impetus of urban rail development into the future.

Section snippets

Research framework

There is a large gap between urban transport planning practice and the briefs written by government bureaucrats for consultants in project development and evaluation, and what academics – adopting a critical perspective on events – are able to publish on the policy-making process. Successful politicians are those that can implement reform and deliver change often by promoting their own (or their electorate’s) favourite infrastructure project – the “directors of urban change” (Nas, 2005).

Turkish cities with urban rail systems

There are eighty one designated towns and cities in Turkey of which eleven have an urban rail public transport system in operation in 2015 (Fig. 1). All of the eleven cities are located either in the western part of the country or in the inner parts of the main Anatolian land mass. This spatial pattern of urban rail is typical of “core-periphery” relationships identified by development geographers.

Table 1 provides the basic population, economy and public transport statistics for these eleven

Why LRT/Tram lines in eight Turkish cities?

Before we attempt to answer the question of why LRT/tramlines have been applied in these eight cities, it is important to review briefly some global approaches and practices. Today, modern public transport systems have proven their value in a transport contribution to more sustainable cities. What matters now is a precise determination of different cities’ characteristics, their future projected developments and then choosing the most suitable transport investment based on analyses of

Planning, investment and operational performances

Fig. 2 illustrates the type of urban systems (LRT or tramway) and their timelines of operation for the eight cities. It demonstrates how urban rail investments have accelerated in the 2000s. Amongst the eight cities, Konya was the first city with LRT and tramline developments, followed by Bursa and Eskisehir. Konya has a very flat terrain and wider streets than many other Turkish cities so the construction of the tramlines has been relatively straightforward. The city has a simple street

Case study cities

Additional light can be shed on the planning, implementation and operation of LRT and tramways in Turkish cities by undertaking more detailed case studies. This section has selected one successful example - Bursa - and contrasted it with Adana which is not a very successful case of effective implementation. Further discussion and analyses are presented of these two cities to illustrate the more general issues that occur in the smaller Turkish cities (in comparison to Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir).

The future – public-private partnership financing?

For many countries in the Asian region, urban and regional infrastructure bottlenecks remain a major impediment to sustaining economic growth (ASEAN Secretariat, 2010, Min, 2014). In the region’s emerging economies, investment in infrastructure is essential for the development of the manufacturing and services sectors to enable countries such as Turkey to drive productivity and maintain long-term economic growth. Infrastructure development remains an expensive and complex undertaking, and the

Conclusions

Turkey is investing in railways (both urban and national rail networks) at an accelerating pace. The government’s master development plans and policy papers explain the dominant railway policies and the substantial investments for 2023: further network extensions; increases in rail patronage; and the further development and modernisation of the railway sector. The central government has initiated a privatisation process, and, accordingly, has formulated an economic re-structuring program that

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to note their special thanks to the Institute for Transport Policy Studies (Japan) for funding part of this research and for their critical and valuable comments on the policy discussions for urban rail development in Turkey. The authors are also grateful for the assistance by the municipal planners and governors from (in alphabetic order): Adana, Antalya, Bursa, Eskisehir, Gaziantep, Kayseri, Konya and Samsun. They thank the anonymous reviewers of an early draft that has

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