Traffic is a problem that affects both residents and visitors to Istanbul, Turkey’s most populous metropolis and home to more than 15 million people. When fewer automobiles were on the roads during the coronavirus outbreak, the city exhaled in unison. Istanbul, however, performs much worse in terms of traffic levels two years later.
The traffic has gotten worse during the past few weeks, especially around rush hour when it rose to a whopping 70% in the evenings. Many school buses have already finished their regular duty by the time this occurs, Daily Sabah reports.
Professor Mustafa Ilıcalı, an expert in traffic, claims it has something to do with the increase in the number of cars on the road, while Professor Mustafa Ztürk, an expert in the environment, emphasizes the threat posed by poor air quality.
If drivers go at a sluggish speed, such as 10 km/h, their fuel consumption increases by 50% or more. He stresses that this entails increased air pollution.
Istanbul is ranked as having the worst traffic congestion in an annual survey by a manufacturer of automobile navigation systems.
According to TomTom’s estimate for 2021, governments are removing restrictions as traffic volumes progressively recover to those before the epidemic and the number of cases declines.
Another study by Yeditepe University in Istanbul, which was released in 2020, concluded that the city’s heavy traffic caused citizens to lose 70 minutes of daily time.
The survey, which tracked traffic data across 5,000 kilometers of traffic in Istanbul for a year, discovered that a trip that ordinarily takes 15 minutes may take up to 50.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one of the primary sources of global pollution is traffic, and around 7 million people worldwide are at danger of dying young as a result of pollution.
As of August, according to official data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), there were more than 4.5 million automobiles in Istanbul, although analysts claim that number is rising daily.
