Spot for 3rd brigde over the Bosphorus revealed

Yalçın Bayer ISTANBUL - Hürriyet

Vehicles fill the sea on Istanbul’s Asian side in an area where a third bridge over the Bosphorus will be built. DHA photo

A young man in the Sarıyer district’s Rumelifeneri village has taken a photograph of the area where two piers of Istanbul’s third bridge over the Bosphous will be located. The image, captured from the European side of the city, was taken when the young man and his friends accidentally happened across the industrial construction equipment. He later sent the photo to daily Hürriyet.

The previous week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had overseen the area via helicopter over the Bosphorus. A ground-breaking ceremony for the construction work is expected to be held May 29.

Erdoğan has thrown his weight behind the 4.5-billion-Turkish-Lira project and the bridge is now predicted to open as early as 2015. 

However environmentalists, urban planners and many Istanbul residents are furious at the plan, arguing that it will create more traffic, increase the number of vehicles in Istanbul and spell an end to the few remaining green areas in the city.

Plans for a third bridge over the Bosphorus have circulated since the early 1990s, with its proponents claiming that another motorway across the strait would ease traffic congestion and generate extensive profits.