ISTANBUL - Anatolia News Agency
AA Photo
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.
August/15/2012