Tag: transportation

  • Turkey’s transportation project costs to reach $60 billion in 2013

    Turkey’s transportation project costs to reach $60 billion in 2013

    Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb. 8 /Trend A.Taghiyeva/

    Tunnel_090608

    The total cost of transportation projects in Turkey, be it the start or completion planned for 2013, will reach $60 billion, Turkish Transport Minister Binali Yildirim said, Star newspaper reported.

    The minister said the Marmaray railway tunnel project is amongst the major projects to be completed this year. Also the largest project, construction of which will begin in 2013, is the third airport in Istanbul.

    In general this year, it is expected to put into operation 11 projects and start construction on 102.

    Yildirim noted that the tender for construction of the third airport will be held on May 3. Some 14 local and foreign companies have already expressed willingness to participate in the tender, he said.

    The third airport in Istanbul will be built on the area near Lake Terkos in the north of the city. The airport’s transportation capacity will reach 150 million passengers a year.

    Earlier, the Air Transport Department under the Turkish Ministry of Transport, Shipping and Communications told Trend that the construction of the third airport in Istanbul will cost 10 billion lira.

    The ministry also noted that the first phase of the airport will be able to serve 90 million people a year. In the future, this figure will rise to 150 million a year.

    via Turkey’s transportation project costs to reach $60 billion in 2013 – Trend.Az.

  • Giant ‘seagull’ set to land on Istanbul skyline

    Giant ‘seagull’ set to land on Istanbul skyline

    The Gateway goes behind the scenes of the world’s major transport hubs, revealing the logistics that keep goods and people moving. This month, the show is in Istanbul, Turkey.

    121119054355 kabatas seagull shore view horizontal gallery

    (CNN) — Wheeling around the skies above the ferry boats and cargo ships, seagulls are as a familiar sight above the Bosphorus as the commuters and containers on it.

    Their enduring presence on Istanbul’s busy waterway will soon be further cemented with the construction of a new transport hub designed to look like the seabird in flight.

    Perched on the western shores of the Bosphorus, the Kabatas Seagull Transportation Hub will enable new and improved connections for ferries, trains, buses and some small ships, says Ali Ulvi Altan, director of major projects for Hakan Kiran Architecture.

    “Today this area carries around 60,000 passengers per day … when [the hub is completed it will carry] around 90,000 persons per day by our estimates,” Altan said.

    The seagull was a natural choice for the design, says Altan, because the bird is the symbol of the Bosphorus.

    The Istanbul-based architects will be assisted by Dutch engineering company, Royal HaskoningDHV who will be providing geotechnical, environmental and maritime expertise.

    In addition to its iconic design, the project will incorporate green features such as rainwater collection and a renewable energy facility.

    Work on the building is due to start next year, Altan says, and should be completed by 2015/16.

    via Giant ‘seagull’ set to land on Istanbul skyline – CNN.com.

  • Long Distance Buses in Turkey

    Long Distance Buses in Turkey

    by Matt Gangemi

    As BoltBus starts up 4x a day bus service between Seattle and Portland, building on QuickCoach‘s 7x a day service between Seattle and Vancouver BC, it might be a good time to look at a country with inter-city bus travel that really works. I’ve already looked at Istanbul’s wide array of travel options, now let’s consider the best way to get between cities in Turkey.

    Ankara Bus Terminal, Tomek Türkiyede

    Behold the Ankara bus terminal, in the capital of Turkey. There are dozens (hundreds?) of long-distance bus companies in Turkey, each one providing a similar service. Every city and town in the country has a bus terminal, with a similar configuration: buses outside of small storefronts of different bus companies, each advertising destinations, departure times, and prices. Walk past the storefronts until you find a good deal for your destination, walk in and buy a ticket, and board your bus.

    Onboard, you can generally expect clean comfortable seats, the bus equivallent of a flight attendant, a bathroom, a moist towel to clean your hands, a lemon scented perfume or hand sanitizer (I could never quite figure this out), a cellophane-wrapped biscuit, a cup of Nescafe or tea, a restroom, and a low-budget Turkish movie playing on a TV screen. If the journey is long enough, your bus will stop at a large rest area with an inexpensive restaurant. The bus will likely be direct routed only between city bus stations, though it will in practice stop several times in a traffic lane of a major freeway and let people off, to climb over a fence toward their destination.

    It’s not a huge mystery that Turkey has this massive long-distance bus network. Their trains are not fast or efficient, car ownership is comparatively low (9.8M passenger cars for 74.7M people, compared to our 238M for our 313M people), and they’re not rich enough to fly very often ($14.5k/person median per-capita GDP). The question is: can we replicate something like this here? As the price of fuel rises and driving rates drop, maybe BoltBus and QuickCoach are signs of the future.

    (note: all numbers from Wikipedia)

    via Long Distance Buses in Turkey – Seattle Transit Blog.

  • Truck owners mull Iraq as alternative route to Turkey, Europe

    Truck owners mull Iraq as alternative route to Turkey, Europe

    By Omar Obeidat

    AMMAN –– Owners of cargo trucks are mulling using Iraq as an alternative transit route to Turkey and Europe as just a few trucks enter Syria per day due to the turbulence in the northern neighbour.

    According to Mohammad Dawood, president of the Jordan Truck Owners Association (JTOA), over the past two weeks Jordanian trucks carrying vegetables and other goods to Turkey and Europe have “rarely” travelled through Syria due to the ongoing instability.

    He told The Jordan Times over the phone on Saturday that although Syrian authorities are not banning the entry of Jordanian cargo trucks through their land, owners and drivers are reluctant to enter the violence-hit country.

    Dawood indicated that before the current situation, where Syrian security forces are cracking down on protesters in several areas, between 200-300 cargo trucks used to cross the border with Syria every day carrying various goods to Turkish and European markets, adding presently just a few trucks go to Syria, although there have no reports that drivers have experienced trouble in the Syrian territories.

    According to the JTOA president, Syrian border authorities on Friday banned Turkish trucks laden with vegetables from Jordan to Europe to enter the country.

    He said that there have been talks with the Iraqi side to use Iraq as a conduit for Jordanian trucks heading for Turkey.

    Asked whether safety issues would be a source of concern for truck owners and drivers, Dawood replied that in recent months Jordanian trucks have travelled almost across all Iraqi cities without recording any security threats.

    “We are ready to enter Turkey and Europe through Iraq but are awaiting a response from Iraqi authorities,” he said.

    Last week, the Turkish government announced that it would be considering using Iraq as a transit route for trade with the Middle East if the situation in Syria worsens.

    In regards to passenger movement between Jordan and Syria, Ikhlas Yousef, spokesperson of the Land Transport Regulatory Commission, told The Jordan Times yesterday that the number of transport vehicles going to Syria has dropped sharply over the past few months due to the situation in Syria.

    The border between the two countries is open and there have been no changes in cargo and passenger transport procedures, she added, indicating, however, that Syrian authorties sometimes decide to temporarily close the border crossing.

    via Truck owners mull Iraq as alternative route to Turkey, Europe | Jordan Times.

  • Betting on Bicycles to Break Istanbul’s Gridlock

    Betting on Bicycles to Break Istanbul’s Gridlock

    090711 03“Are you crazy?” is a question cyclists in Istanbul often hear. The city’s steep hills, poor roads, and dangerous drivers make it a hair-raising place for anyone on two wheels. But with Istanbul’s roads wracked with gridlock, the city’s cyclists are mounting a campaign to claim a bigger share of the road.

    According to the Japan International Cooperation Agency, which completed a transportation master plan for Istanbul in 2009, car traffic in this city of roughly 13 million, one of Europe’s largest metropolitan areas, will nearly quadruple over 15 years.

    Once a month, dozens of cyclists gather in Goztepe Park on Istanbul’s Asian side to take to the avenues. They are part of Critical Mass, a worldwide bicycle protest movement whose riders regularly swamp roads, demanding more space — and more respect — from drivers.

    Another monthly ride started earlier this year at Taksim Square on the European side of the city. For Imre Balanli, a filmmaker who lived for several years in Paris and New York, two cities with their own gridlock problems, the bicycle is the only way to travel. “In Istanbul, you don’t have a good public transportation system, the buses are crowded and they don’t run on a schedule and I don’t want to be stuck in traffic for hours. So, this is really the best way to commute,” Balanli said.

    But it can be lonely. Only around 10,000 people cycle regularly in the city, according to the Bicycles Union, a Turkish lobbying group. In New York City there are about half a million cyclists. “If we are visible, then we hope that more people will start riding bicycles,” said Balanli. “Whatever it takes, this is our right and we should be able to do it safely.”

    PepsiCo employee Erkal Hascan experienced the dangers of Istanbul’s roads the hard way. Last year, he started cycling to work, around 45 minutes each way. “Other drivers on the motorway act as if they don’t see you. You are a ghost,” Hascan said.

    After two months of riding, he was left lying on the asphalt with a broken collarbone. A bus had swerved unexpectedly in front of him and forced him to veer sharply, throwing him over his handlebars. “Did any driver stop?” he recounted, speaking in English. “They just honked their horns: ‘Come on! Stand up and get out of the road!’”

    Part of the problem, say enthusiasts and analysts, is that few people will cycle on dangerous roads; and with few cyclists, there is little pressure to provide infrastructure to make the roads safer.

    The city currently has about 50 kilometers of cycle lanes, including a long stretch along the Asian shore of the Bosphorus that is mainly used for recreational biking.

    Murat Suyubatmaz, a former captain of Turkey’s national cycling team, founded the Bicycles Union in 2008 to lobby for better infrastructure. “In Turkey, the love of cycling that stems from people’s childhoods has not disappeared. It is only that fear and safety has held them back from cycling,” Suyubatmaz said. “If the security exists and there are proper bike routes, the bicycle will come back to life.”

    There is an urgent need to diversify transportation options. Istanbul has an estimated annual population growth rate of 3.45 percent. Meanwhile, Turkey’s economy posted a growth rate of 11 percent for the first quarter of 2011. This cocktail of growing population and rising prosperity translates into exploding rates of car ownership.

    “The future looks somewhat bleak in terms of addressing congestion,” commented Sibel Bulay, director of Turkey’s Center for Sustainable Transport. She believes that although the government is waking up to the problem, vested economic interests are causing the city to continue to expand in a car-dependent fashion.

    A planned third bridge over the Bosphorus to the north of Istanbul has made environmentalists and urban planners particularly uncomfortable. The government claims the project will ease dire congestion over the existing bridges by allowing intercontinental traffic to bypass the city, but opponents point out that these vehicles only account for 5 percent of current bridge traffic.

    They also fear that the project will encourage urban sprawl that will ultimately devastate the forests to the north of Istanbul. “What really needs to happen is people need to get smarter in their transport choices,” said Bulay.

    But even the bicycle’s staunchest advocates acknowledge that Istanbul’s steep hills, sweltering summers and frequently icy winters mean two-wheeled transport cannot provide a complete solution to the city’s congestion crisis. Even so, its supporters are getting more vocal and, according to some, more numerous.

    Ozan Bozkurt, who runs a bike shop in the Besiktas neighborhood, says he has seen an increase in both customers and competition in the past two years, and that the roads aren’t as lonely as they once were. “Nearly eight years ago when we ride on the Bosphorus, if we see some biker from the other side, we just shake our hand to say ‘hello.’ Both of us . . . are happy to see each other. But at the moment, we see lots of people.”

    He admits to getting a kick from braving the city’s streets in the hope that one day more cyclists will follow him. “In Istanbul, there’s adrenalin. It’s a bit dangerous, but it’s really good.”

    Editor’s note:

    Alexander Christie-Miller is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul, where he writes for The Times. David Trilling is EurasiaNet.org’s Central Asia editor.

    via Turkey: Betting on Bicycles to Break Istanbul’s Gridlock | EurasiaNet.org.