City mulling 'metrobus-trains' as solution to Istanbul's traffic woes

ISTANBUL - Anatolia News Agency

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The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality is working on ways to alleviate the congestion on the city's vital metrobus route, including devising a way to combine the metrobuses into a metrobus-train, according to the mayor.

The metrobus route in Istanbul is severely overburdened, with 33,000 passengers being carried in one direction in a single hour on a single route, Kadir Topbaş said, adding that the globally accepted capacity for such a line was between 12,000 and 15,000 passengers.

"The numbers show that this route cannot be continued with buses. To transport 33,000 passengers, you need a light rail system," Topbaş said. “We considered turning the metrobus route into a light-rail or a tram route but a railway cannot cross the Haliç Bridge [over the Golden Horn]."

The municipality has also considered devising a way to add chargeable power supplies which the vessels would use while crossing the Haliç Bridge.

Another possibility the city officials are considering is finding a way to attach the metrobuses to each other so that they would operate like "cars of a freight train," Topbaş said, suggesting a hybrid between a bus and a tram.

Metrobus control center

The municipality is set to form a control center whose sole purpose will be to oversee the metrobuses, Topbaş said. Personnel at the control center would look out for congestion and the number of passengers at stations and direct empty metrobuses to overcrowded stops.