Location Zonguldak, Turkey
Year 2018
Client Kivi Stratejik Planlama
Job description Geovisualisation
Status Ongoing

Zonguldak is a northern city of Turkey, located 4 hours to the east of Istanbul. The city has a formidably challenging topography resulting in a unique street network, therefore peculiar public transportation routes. 

Currently, two modes of public transportation used in the city are buses and dolmuş‘s. A dolmuş (“stuffed” in Turkish) is a mini-bus carrying a maximum of 9 people at a time, is similar to a shared-taxi that runs a set route. The dolmuş‘s do not have a schedule as they only depart when all of the seats are full, hence the name. Additionally, they do not have formal stops, but rather they allow the passengers to get off wherever they need on the route. Dolmuş is particularly common paratransit method in Turkey. 

While the buses run on established timetables, when it comes to having bus stops they act similar to that of a dolmuş: They only have a start and end stop. These stops do not have any kind of information regarding the bus/dolmuş routes, and unless you are a local it is next to impossible to find your way around the city using public transport.

The city is currently undergoing a transformation and there are several urban scale development projects, aiming to make the city a touristic attraction. This requires bettering the wayfinding system throughout the city as well.

In order to create the public transportation maps, all 24 bus routes and 28 dolmuş routes were recorded with a high-precision GPS device by local students. The routes were then simplified Vignelli style. Since there is little information to show (ie. not having bus stops, connections, transfers), we regard this project as ongoing and the maps will be updated as the city develops its infrastructure.

The bus map.

The dolmuş map.