Record number of vehicles cross Osmangazi Bridge: Minister

ISTANBUL - İhlas News Agency

A record number of 80,624 vehicles crossed the Osmangazi Bridge on July 8, Transport and Infrastructure Minister Adil Karaismailoğlu has said, stressing that 43,301 vehicles crossed the bridge on July 4 alone.

“It used to take an hour and a half to cross the [İzmit] bay by car and 45 to 60 minutes by ferry. There was congestion on the road for hours on busy days,” said Karaismailoğlu, reiterating that the bridge was completed and put into service on July 1, 2016.

“Now the bay can be crossed in six minutes via the Osmangazi Bridge,” Karaismailoğlu said, emphasizing that the bridge constitutes the most important part of the Istanbul-İzmir highway, which connects Istanbul to the Aegean region.

The minister also pointed out that it was determined that 14,275 vehicles used the 1915 Çanakkale Bridge on July 8.

The Osmangazi Bridge is a key plank of the Istanbul-İzmir highway project, which started in 2010, and covers a total distance of 426 kilometers, including a 384-kilometer highway and 42 kilometers of access road.

The highway was built through a public-private partnership (PPP) and was the first road project in Türkiye to be procured under the build-operate-transfer (BOT) model.