If I understand Dayla Rogers’ two recent articles on this page, published on April 10 and 11, concerning the Haliç (Golden Horn) metro bridge project correctly, completion of the modern structure could have jeopardized İstanbul’s place on the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Sites list. It would appear that Ms. Rogers thinks this is a price worth paying in order to facilitate the completion of the metro’s linking of Hacıosman with Yenikapı (as planned) and thus reduce vehicular overuse and congestion.
UNESCO’s complaint rested on the belief that the modern, cantilevered bridge would obscure certain aspects of the Süleymaniye Mosque and surrounding historical buildings that constitute this world-famous skyline. They are probably right. Indeed, the skyline has been deemed so sacred that the city of İstanbul has passed a law protecting it from intrusive tower-blocks -- 30 kilometers away.
According to the sublimely oxymoronic İstanbul Heritage Committee, the additional 7 kilometers of metro line will add 500,000 potential commuters a day. In a city of some 15 million people and with annual visitor figures now touching 9 million, this will of course make all the difference.
No, seriously though, İstanbul most certainly does need a modern, integrated transportation network and most certainly doesn’t need another single car on the roads. The problem is that it is 100 years too late to create this essential infrastructure without upset and upheaval. As London, Paris and New York began construction on ground and underground rail networks starting at around the end of the 19th century, it is no surprise that public transportation options in those cities far outnumber those available in İstanbul.
I admit that some things must be lost in order for the citizens of the city to gain others, including the ability to move freely about for business or pleasure. The loss, however, needs to be mitigated and the gain calibrated to weigh, at least marginally, in the city’s favor. While İstanbul is a great place to live, no one would disagree that the perennial problem is traffic. With over 4 million private vehicles on the roads in İstanbul, it is no surprise that traffic hold-ups constitute a large part of commuter stress on their journeys to and from work.
So, İstanbul’s municipal government in concert with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) came up with a cunning plan. Unfortunately, this plan is ill thought-out, expensive and potentially environmentally fatal. Re-elected for a third consecutive term in government, the AK Party pitched its campaign based on major infrastructure projects, which include a third Bosporus bridge, a canal to shift sea traffic away from the Bosporus and even more bizarre, a road tunnel connecting the Asian and European sides from Haydarpaşa to the Haliç along with the above-mentioned Haliç metro bridge.
A project that will add to gridlock
Dubbed “Eurasia,” the tunnel project beneath the Bosporus is, however, more likely to add to gridlock as private vehicles flock to use it, simply adding to congestion, pollution and safety concerns. The İstanbul Chamber of City Planners questioned whether İstanbul’s substructure could handle the tunnel, citing the 14.6 kilometer Eurasia tunnel would not help ease the city’s traffic problems, but instead increase them. Rather, they urge the creation of more railway and public transportation projects, including on water.
“Marmaray already has a capacity to carry 1 million people per day … why do we need another tunnel?” the report reads. Environmentalist organization Platform for Life instead of a Third Bridge members agree with the report. “The İstanbul Municipality should give up its ‘crazy’ projects, such as the third bridge or Eurasia. Instead of building more freeways, they should create projects for sea and rail,” group member Burak Atlar said. This has all fallen on deaf ears -- as usual -- and the $1.1 billion project is already under way.
A brief report in the Guardian on June 24, 1907 reads: “On Saturday the Charing Cross, Euston, and Hampstead Railway, which has been described as ‘the last link’ in the system of tubes promoted by Underground Electric Railways of London, was opened by Mr. Lloyd-George, MP, president of the Board of Trade … Mr. Lloyd-George hoped that this was not the last tube London was going to see. Each successive experiment marked an improvement. … Last year more than 240 million passengers were carried on the electric underground railways of London. It was only a few years ago that these great tube railways practically started. … Even now the streets were congested enough [sic]. What would have happened if this provision had not been made?” Well, İstanbul today is what!
İstanbul is a tale of two cities: one some 8,000 year old, the other 100. Reconciling them is not easy and some sacrifices are inevitable. People wept as the jackhammers started tearing up Taksim Square and Tarlabaşı, as they had before when the bulldozers moved into Sulukule, and they will weep again before long. The Haliç metro needs a bridge, but does it need THIS one?
Professor Gülşen Özaydın, head of the urban planning department at the Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts in İstanbul, has said: “There is no urban planning that sees the city as a whole. Projects are completely detached one from another, and take no heed of the existing urban fabric, or the people living there. That’s very dangerous for the future of the city.” (Source: Constanze Letsch, Guardian, March 1, 2012)
Özaydın also criticized the complete lack of public debate: “Expert views are rarely taken into consideration,” she says. “We only learn of projects like Taksim Square from the newspapers. How can that be?”
It is time the two cities -- those that govern and the governed -- talked to one another, and listened. Otherwise, the spinning of the plan for the third bridge as a clear benefit with a glitzy post-decision video is transparent hypocrisy, since the only ones to profit from such schemes are the contractors, construction companies, oil providers and automobile makers along, of course, with the politicians and responsible local officials in their pockets. And we wouldn’t want that now, would we?
