Local Turkiye

New fast public transportation & 4 new metro lines coming to Istanbul

Ekrem Imamoglu, Mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) stated that they will start the metro lines Kaynarca-Pendik-Tuzla, Cekmekoy-Sancaktepe-Sultanbeyli, Kirazli-Halkali and Mahmutbey-Bahcesehir-Esenyurt, whose constructions has stopped, with a financing of $ 580 million dollars from abroad.

Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality realized the first Eurobond sale exported abroad after 33 years. Mayor Imamoglu said:

‘’ We will quickly start construction on 4 more metro lines thanks to the $ 580 million of financing we brought to Istanbul.’’

Reminding that they found foreign financing last year as a result of their overseas visits and the effective efforts of their team, Imamoglu emphasized that they restarted the rail system construction in 6 lines that were stopped in this way.

‘’ We have started the related work.’’

Imamoglu gave detailed information about the metro lines:

‘’ We have completed the Mahmutbey-Mecidiyekoy Metro line, which is the first of these lines that has been completely stopped for 2 years and opened it to the service of our people. We will open the Alibeykoy-Eminonu tram line in a few weeks. Again in 2021, we will complete the Ikitelli-Bahariye partial metro construction and the Cibali-Alibeykoy tram construction and will open them. We will complete all our lines, whose construction we have already restarted, in 2022 and 2023 and put them into service. Of course, much more investments need to be made to make life easier for 16 million Istanbulites. In this context, for the financing of Kaynarca-Pendik-Tuzla, Cekmekoy-Sancaktepe-Sultanbeyli, Kirazli-Halkali and Mahmutbey-Bahcesehir-Esenyurt metro lines, whose constructions were completely stopped, we started working with our friends to issue Eurobonds as a new financing tool instead of borrowing from banks. For the project finance of our 4 metro lines I mentioned, we managed to issue the first unsecured Eurobond in the amount of $ 580 million to international capital markets with a 5-year maturity. Our bond issue on Wednesday, December 2, attracted great attention. In contrast to our targeted $ 580 million bond sales, we encountered a full 4.3-fold purchase demand of $ 2.5 billion. ‘’

Stating that thanks to the new financing, they will start the construction of 4 more metro lines quickly, Imamoglu said:

‘’ Thus, Istanbul will have a total of 52.1 kilometres of new metro and 39 new stations.’’

Hizray Project

Providing information about the new tenders planned, Ekrem Imamoglu said:

‘’ We are planning to tender our Hizray project, which will pass between Sabiha Gokcen Airport and Halkali, from east to west and across Istanbul in approximately 55 minutes, to present it to Istanbul. Again, regarding the Incirli-Beylikduzu line, which has been related to the west of Istanbul for many years, we intend to tender these lines in 2021 within the same scope.

source: hurriyet.com / translated by Melisa Karayusufoglu

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