Marmaray Project Essay

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Marmaray Project Vinil Pillai Introduction Nowadays, one of the biggest problems in metropolitan cities is transportation because the transportation is not developed enough to meet the people’s expectations. In order to solve this problem, big cities are looking for new options by constructing bridges, subways or by increasing the number of buses in the city. Since Istanbul is one of the crowded cities in the world, the city is also having the same problem. Although the city has 2 bridges, which connect the European and Asian side, subway system, and public buses but people are still having transportation problems. Therefore, the city of Istanbul decided to construct Marmaray railway to provide another transportation opportunity to people. Background of Marmaray Project In 1860, people first came up with an idea to connect the both sides of the Bosporus by constructing a tunnel under the sea. However, the technology at those days was not sufficient to build up this tunnel. In the early 1980s, the demand of public transportation has increased because the population has increased sharply. According to the feasibility reports in 1987, constructing a tunnel under Bosporus will be cost-effective and practicable. In 1999, Turkish Republic and Japanese Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) made a loan agreement for the funding of Marmaray Project. According to the contract, JBIC will provide funding for the %35 of the project cost (Marmaray.com & Avrasya, 2003). In 2001, the agreement was made with the consultant company (Tasdemir, M. A., Akkaya, Y., Erdogdu, S., Ozturk, M., n.d.). The estimated total cost of the project was $4.5 billion dollars (Kable, 2014). In August 2004, Marmaray Project, the deepest immersed tube tunnel in the world, started. The project includes railway Bosporus tube crossing, tunnel, and station construction.
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