The Turkish Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, Adel Kara Ismailoglu, said on Saturday that the Istanbul Canal is 13 times safer than the Bosphorus Strait in terms of navigational safety. This came in a speech he delivered at the ceremony of laying the foundation stone for the first bridges of the “Istanbul Canal” to actually start implementing the project announced by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on April 7, 2011. Kara Ismailoğlu explained that the first bridge is part of the road connecting the regions of Başakşehir – Bahçeşehir – Khadimkoy with a length of 45 km.
“Canal Istanbul is 13 times safer than the Bosphorus in terms of navigational safety, according to our simulation experiments,” he added. According to Anadolu Agency.
He explained that the entire length of the bridge is 1,618 meters, the suspended part is 440 meters, and its width is 46 meters.
Kara Ismailoglu highlighted the danger of the high traffic of ships in the Bosphorus, saying: “54,000 ships pass through the Bosphorus annually, and the high frequency of ship movement, the large size of ships and their transportation of dangerous materials such as fuel poses a great threat to the city of Istanbul, which is a heritage of humanity.”
He pointed out that international cargo ships also pose a threat to the internal transport movement between Istanbul’s ports, which carries 500,000 passengers per day.
Turkey began building the Istanbul Canal on the European side of the city, after the Bosphorus strait turned into one of the most sensitive sea straits for cargo ships, as a result of the traffic congestion in it.
The canal links the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, and divides the European part of the city into two parts, making the eastern part of the European part an island in the middle of the continents of Asia and Europe.
The project will be implemented in cooperation between the Turkish public and private sectors, and 6 bridges will pass over it, and a new city will be built on its banks.
