İzmit Bay to be closed for bridge building

ISTANBUL-Reuters

Turkey will close the İzmit Bay, a main industrial region, to all shipping traffic today due to work on a bridge project, the GAC shipping agency said yesterday.

Tüpraş, Turkey’s sole oil refiner, and other energy companies and manufacturers are situated on the bay, which is at the eastern end of the Sea of Marmara, near Istanbul.

GAC said the Transportation Ministry announced the closure, to take place between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.
The $1 billion Izmit Bay Bridge project, led by Italy’s Astaldi, will be one of the world’s longest suspension bridges when it opens in 2015.