It’s late on a steamy Saturday night and our taxi driver curses and rages at having found himself – and us, his passengers – in a trap. He weaves and winds down side streets and through tunnels, but, eventually, there’s nothing to be done: the bridge is the only route across.



From afar, it’s a wonderful view: Istanbul’s Bosphorus bridge, lit up and flashing against the dark of night. Giant cargo ships pass underneath, and pair of long, red-and-white lights stretch the length of the bridge towards the Asian shore. But up close, it’s a sight everyone dreads.



There are few cities where multi-hour traffic jams at 2am are the norm. But most nights this summer, Istanbul has been one of them. A trip across the bridge by the dolmuş mini-bus from Taksim Square to Kadikoy, on Istanbul’s Anatolian side – a distance of nine miles – can take just 15 minutes when traffic free. The trouble is, it almost never is.



This heaving city of 15 million residents has never been particularly easy to traverse. But new research by navigation company TomTom has found Istanbul to have the worst congestion of any city in the world. The statistics are startling: what should be a 30-minute daily journey ends up costing, during rush hour, an extra 125 hours of travel time over a year. That’s three entire working weeks spent sitting in traffic.



Istanbul has just 250 miles of highway infrastructure to handle traffic. London has 435 miles and Los Angeles 527 miles

Traffic jams form during the first day of school in Istanbul. Photograph: Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Last month, city authorities decided to build a roll-on/roll-off vehicle shipping service in the south-western suburb of Ambarli. This would allow trucks and heavy vehicles wanting to travel through Istanbul to board a ship, skip the city entirely and be deposited 185 miles to the east. It could remove around 2,000 trucks from the city’s gridlocked streets every day. Because Istanbul is surrounded by water on three sides – the Marmara, the Black Sea and the Bosphorus strait – it has just 250 miles of highway infrastructure to handle traffic. Compare that to cities such as London (435 miles of motorways) or Los Angeles county (527 miles of high-speed freeways).

In a city that attracts more than 100,000 new residents every year, authorities have pledged to add hundreds of miles of metro lines. Moreover, the opening of the Marmaray underwater rail line two years ago has allowed commuters to cross from European to Anatolian Istanbul in just four minutes. Motorists have already taken to detouring over the less-crowded Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridge, four miles to the north. But soon the Yavuz Sultan Selim bridge – already controversial because its construction involved felling several million trees, and because it is named after a brutal 16th-century sultan – will open: when fully integrated, it will allow traffic from Greece and Bulgaria to completely bypass Istanbul.

Using the Eurasia tunnel is expected to cut the travel time between the Asian and European sides of Istanbul from 100 minutes to as little as 15 minutes. Photograph: Avrasya Tuneli

But Istanbul’s boldest undertaking is taking place at the heart of the capital. After 16 months of painstaking drilling under the Bosphorus, the Eurasia tunnel, a 3.3-mile underwater highway linking residential districts in European and Asian Istanbul, broke through the last section of rock last month. The world’s first transcontinental underwater tunnel for cars is expected to carry 130,000 cars and small buses on a two-lane, twin-deck highway every day, at a charge of £3 each way. Its owners promise it will cut emissions and reduce travel time otherwise undertaken via the Bosphorus bridge from 100 minutes to just 15.

On the Asian shore, a massive chasm leads into the tunnel, which then dives 100 metres below sea level. Two miles later, it emerges on European soil. It’s an impressive piece of engineering.

Cross section of the Eurasia tunnel. Photograph: Avrasya Tuneli

Critics, however, say the Eurasia tunnel will do little more than move lots of vehicles from one high-volume district to another – thus doing little to ease traffic. They also point out that the reduced travel time will encourage, not dissuade, commuters from jumping into their cars. The fact that public buses can’t access the tunnel, and that 80% of traffic is expected to be (low-occupancy) cars, suggests a formula for more headaches.

“More car-centric infrastructure means encouraging city dwellers to buy new cars or to use their existing ones,” said Arzu Tekir, director of Embarq Turkey, a research organisation focusing on sustainable city development. “Instead of doing that, the city should invest in smart technologies, open data and low-carbon solutions.”

Other major cities that have water-related constraints on transport planning have coped by developing highly integrated subway systems, such as New York, where 468 stations serve 34 different lines. Istanbul, on the other hand, has just 70 stations and five lines, of which only three are connected to each other. Sydney tackles its problem differently: the city relies heavily on buses, which make up half of all public journeys. Istanbul’s Eurasia tunnel will be closed to public buses.

Car sales and fuel are important sources of tax dollars for the Turkish government. So are toll payments, which bring in about £5m a month from the two Bosphorus bridges. It’s not hard to imagine that tax revenue is a big reason the Eurasia tunnel is being built only to accommodate private vehicles, not public transportation.

City authorities are not blind to the problem. “The number one reason for traffic congestion is highway-dominated personal transport – the private car,” said Mustafa Ilicali, a consultant to Istanbul municipal authorities. “Our observations show that 80% of traffic volume is created by private cars carrying one passenger.”

The number one reason for traffic congestion is highway-dominated personal transport – the private car Mustafa Ilicali

Environmentalists say construction of the Yavuz Sultan Selim bridge is eating into forestland crucial for supplying the city with water. Photograph: Sedat Suna/EPA

He points out that authorities have pursued short-term solutions such as motivating citizens to carpool, but that long-term solutions must include more metro lines. He believes the Eurasia tunnel will help reduce congestion. “The current congestion problem is a result of house-school and house-work trips, so I don’t think that the Eurasia tunnel will result in more cars on the roads,” he said.

North of Istanbul is a world far removed, where peaceful woodlands surround the Bosphorus strait. Here, the Northern Marmara highway and Yavuz Sultan Selim bridge, one of several new monuments to Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s vision for modern Turkey, is quickly taking shape. Environmentalists say projects such as the Yavuz Sultan Selim, Istanbul’s third bridge and pitched as the widest in the world, are eating into pristine forestland crucial for supplying the city with water.

Not everyone is unhappy with the expected onslaught of pollution, noise and traffic on the countryside. In the cat-infested, three-street village of Anadolu Feneri on the Asian shore, locals can hardly wait for the bridge to open. “We will have more customers in our restaurants,” said Erdal Kokkiran, whose father owns a tea house in the village.

And with over £3m being sought for 3.4 hectares (8.4 acres) of land near the highway, the city is set to spread, with congestion likely to follow. “People here see that the highway means the value of their land will increase,” said Kokkiran. “That’s what people want.”

The new highways, bridges and tunnels have support from the highest levels: President Erdogan, has called for the opening of the Eurasia tunnel by the end of the year, which has led to construction crews working 24 hours a day. Few others have much confidence that any of it will help solve Istanbul’s traffic scourge.

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