MITIGATING URBAN TRAFFIC: IDENTIFYING POTENTIAL PARKING LOTS USING GIS AND AHP METHODS IN YALOVA, TÜRKİYE

Abstract

Today, the increasing migration from rural to urban areas, the rising appeal of cities as hubs, and the contribution of unplanned urbanization have led to an increase in urban traffic density, which negatively affects daily urban life. The insufficient number of urban parking lots and the rapid increase in the number of vehicles are among the other significant factors negatively affecting urban traffic. In today's cities with high traffic, increasing the number of parking lots and encouraging their use has a significant impact on alleviating urban traffic congestion. In this regard, using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) together with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which is one of the Multi-Criteria Decision-Making methods, helps achieve highly efficient result. In this study, the issues related to parking lots, which is one of the causes of increased traffic congestion in Yalova, a city located between Türkiye's highly populated and developed metropolitan areas, were examined. The aim of this study is to identify new optimal parking lots using the integration of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) methods to relieve urban traffic in the city. During the study, various sub-component maps were created within the Quantum Geographic Information Systems (QGIS) environment, and the weights of these maps were determined through survey studies using the AHP method. The weighted subcomponent maps were integrated in the QGIS environment to create the final parking lot evaluation map for Yalova, which will contribute to relieving urban traffic, and results and recommendations regarding potential parking lot locations were provided