Seventy new lilac-colored buses that will be used in İstanbul’s public transportation system were introduced to the public in a ceremony on Saturday by Mayor Kadir Topbaş.
İstanbul Mayor Kadir Topbaş introduced 70 new lilac-colored buses at a ceremony on Saturday.
The color, called “erguvan” in Turkish, used to refer to the color of the lilac-like deep-pink leaves of the Judas trees that are staples of the city, was picked by respondents of an international survey conducted by the municipality.
Topbaş said the color of the new buses was decided by a poll conducted among participants from 111 countries, saying the color was properly called “checkered erguvan.”
Introducing the new members of the İstanbul Transportation Authority’s (İETT) bus fleet, the mayor said the level of development and quality of a city is directly correlated to the number of people that use its public transportation lines.
Topbaş said that during the construction of the city’s Metrobus line, which takes up a full lane on the E-5 highway, allowing transit passage to the city buses running along that route through the often heavily congested highway traffic, the mayor’s office had received endless complaints. “There were many against the Metrobus line, but today the line carries more than 700,000 people a day. When we started operating the line, cab drivers thought they would lose passengers. But now, they are so happy with it, I’m pretty sure they would start an uprising if we proposed to remove the line.”
No old buses by 2014
Topbaş said the city was planning to renew all the İETT fleet by 2014, saying some of the older buses had to be upgraded. “And we still have the drivers of the minibuses that have served this city for many years. We are also carrying out projects to transform them into regular buses or a similar system.”
via zaman