The Relationship between Car Dependency And Use of Public Transport in Duhok City- Barriers Analysis And Recommendations

This study was conducted to determine the relationship between car dependency and the use of public transportation in Duhok city. The purpose of this study was to identify the factors that hinder the use of public transportation and the reasons for the absence of public transportation, as well as to determine how to make the young generation change their mobility culture from a passenger car-based system to use public transport. This study was a qualitative study, which consists of Duhok city as a case study for this research, in which purposive, simple random and theoretical sampling was adopted. Two types of Semi-structured interview questions were used one with open-ended questions with governmental experts, the other was open, and the closed-ended question that was used with public people of Duhok city in order to collect the information about transportation situation in Duhok city. This research practiced a qualitative research approach, thus for analyzing data, a thematic coding analysis has been applied. Moreover, for the analysis of close-ended questions, some charts and graphs have been made by utilizing Microsoft Excel Program. This method has been done in order to avoid bias and support data analyzed by other methods of analysis. The study found out that the vehicle or passenger car is the main transport mode in Duhok city, the passenger car provides accessibility and flexibility which public transportation cannot and this is due to the absence of a convenient public transport in Duhok city. In addition, it was pointed out that people can change their minds about favoring the use of public transport over cars, first by developing well-constructed and planned public transport, also with the available of various modes that need to be well integrated with other forms of non-motorized transport, such as pedestrian walkway system, cycling, and taxis.