Plans to turn Istanbul’s historic peninsula into a bicycle-friendly zone are underway, the mayor of the city’s Fatih Municipality has said.
“We are done with the details of the project; soon it will be up for bidding,” said Fatih Mayor Mustafa Demir. “We are working for human centered-service and making the area more walkable.”
The municipality has already closed the area to traffic between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. everyday so that tourists and other people can walk freely, Demir added. “The streets are very small and they do not allow both walking and driving,” he said.
The new “smart bicycle project” will start in three to four months with 111 bikes, according to the mayor.
“People will be able to rent these bikes with their credit cards and drop them off in a different place than where they rented them,” Demir said. “We will have 10 terminals on the historic
peninsula allowing people to, for example, rent a bike in Eminönü and leave it at the Grand Bazaar.”
Out of the 111 total bicycles, 10 will be usable by the disabled and 45 will be hybrid bikes.
“This will also be a solution for the car-parking problem in the area and contribute to solving the traffic problem,” Demir said.
