Istanbul’s Second Tube Tunnel to Be Opened in 3,5 Years

İstanbul’s second tube tunnel project under the Bosporus Strait for vehicle traffic will be constructed in three-and-a-half years.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke during the ground-breaking ceremony of İstanbul’s second tube tunnel that will connect both sides of the metropolitan city for vehicle traffic on Saturday. Erdoğan noted that he wants the second tube tunnel to be completed — one year before expected — in three-and-a-half years and added that the Marmaray rail tube tunnel, which will link the city’s Asian and European sides via an undersea commuter train line, will be opened on Oct. 29, 2013.

The transportation ministry is leading the “İstanbul Strait Highway Transit Project” and upon completion, a vehicle will enter the highway tube tunnel from the Zeytinburnu district’s Kazlıçeşme region on the European side and will surface in the Anatolian side’s Göztepe district passing through the tunnels under the Bosporus. Currently, vehicles can only pass to both sides of İstanbul by way of the two bridges — the Boğaziçi and Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridges.

“Today we are witnessing a new project for Turkey. We will construct a highway beneath the Bosporus. With this project, it is aimed to decrease the traffic on the bridges and in the city. The Avrasya project will be 14.5 kilometers long, while 5.5 kilometers of it will be under the sea [Bosporus]. There will be in total eight underpasses, 10 pedestrian overpasses and four crossroads constructed. The project is expected to be completed in 55 months, so four-in-a-half years, but I want it to be completed in three-and-a-half years,” Erdoğan said. The Avrasya tunnel project will be constructed 1.8 kilometers south of the Marmaray and will cost about $1.1 billion. Experts say the distance between Kazlıçeşme and Göztepe would take 100 minutes using highways and the bridges, but with the Avrasya tunnel project the time period will decrease to 15 minutes.

The Transportation Ministry’s Railroads, Ports and Airports Construction General Directorate (DLH) had tendered the Avrasya project according to the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model. A Turkish-Korean partnership — Yapı Merkezi from Turkey and SK E&C, Kukdong, Samwhan Corp. and Hanshin from South Korea — was the winner of the tender and named the joint company ATAŞ-Avraysa Tunnel Construction.

Moreover, Erdoğan stated that the tender process for the planned third bridge over the Bosporus will be completed this year, during the groundbreaking ceremony of the Avrasya project. “We have not reached a final decision yet, but most probably there will be both motor vehicle traffic and a railway system on the third bridge. The traffic density on the other bridges [Boğaziçi and Fatih Sultan Mehmet] will be decreased since we plan to direct vehicle traffic to the third bridge. In five years time we aim to significantly ease İstanbul’s traffic,” Erdoğan told reporters.
‘Project of the Century’

Meanwhile, the groundbreaking ceremony for the İstanbul-İzmir highway project was held Sunday in İzmir. Minister of Transportation Binali Yıldırım also participated in the event held at İzmir’s Cumhuriyet Square, where thousands gathered to witness the official start of the project, dubbed by the government the “Project of the Century.”

Estimated to cost $6 billion, the İstanbul-İzmir highway begins in the town of Gebze and crosses into the town of Orhangazi in Bursa over the Gulf of İzmit. It will proceed from Bursa to the northwestern province of Balıkesir and end in İzmir. The highway will be 420 kilometers long and the suspension bridge on the İzmit Gulf will be 3 kilometers long, the world’s second longest. Within the framework of the project, 30 viaducts, four tunnels, 209 bridges, 18 booths and five highway maintenance-operation centers will be constructed.

28 February 2011,
TODAY’S ZAMAN, İSTANBUL