The Skeletal Trap: Mapping Spatial Inequality and Ghost Stops in Ankara's Transit Network
This research addresses spatial inequality in transit networks for Ankara's residents, highlighting a fundamental misalignment between urban expansion and network architecture, which is incremental in its methodological approach.
The study tackled Ankara's public transport crisis by analyzing its structural and morphological roots, revealing persistent center-periphery asymmetries and accessibility inequalities through a 173-day operational dataset and a Connectivity-Based Weighted Distribution Model.
Ankara's public transport crisis is commonly framed as a shortage of buses or operational inefficiency. This study argues that the problem is fundamentally morphological and structural. The city's leapfrog urban expansion has produced fragmented peripheral clusters disconnected from a rigid, center-oriented bus network. As a result, demand remains intensely concentrated along the Kizilay-Ulus axis and western corridors, while peripheral districts experience either chronic under-service or enforced transfer dependency. The deficiency is therefore not merely quantitative but rooted in the misalignment between urban macroform and network architecture. The empirical analysis draws on a 173-day operational dataset derived from route-level passenger and trip reports published by EGO under the former "Transparent Ankara" initiative. To overcome the absence of stop-level geospatial data, a Connectivity-Based Weighted Distribution Model reallocates passenger volumes to 1 km x 1 km grid cells using network centrality. The findings reveal persistent center-periphery asymmetries, structural bottlenecks, and spatially embedded accessibility inequalities.