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Department of Spatial Planning

Recovery and resilience of public transportation after COVID-19

A graph from a paper published in European Planning Studies © Bersu Aktaş Taban
Bersu Aktaş Taban has published an article in European Planning Studies on public transport in Istanbul after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bersu Aktaş Taban published a paper on the recovery and resilience of public transportation in Istanbul after COVID-19 in the journal European Transport Studies. The study examines whether and how demand for different public transportation modes changed after the pandemic and whether the lessons learned from the crisis resulted in new policy approaches for enhancing resilience. The research combines comparative time-series analysis of public transport ridership between 2017 and 2022 with semi-structured interviews with policymakers responsible for different public transport modes in Istanbul. The analysis covers urban rail systems, road-based public transportation, and maritime transportation, while the interviews explore the underlying reasons for differences in recovery and perspectives on preparing transportation systems for future crises. The paper contributes to the transportation resilience literature by demonstrating that resilience is mode-specific and that system-level analysis can hide vulnerabilities in individual public transport modes. It further highlights that the presence of alternative transport modes alone may not ensure resilience; their integration within the wider public transportation system is important for the stability of the system as a whole.

Aktaş Taban, B. (2026). Recovery and resilience of public transportation in Istanbul after COVID-19. European Planning Studies, volume and issue pending. DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2026.2736717