In New York, it’s the prices. In Boston, it’s the weather. In Istanbul, the one thing everyone complains about is the traffic.
With good reason. This is a city of more than 15 million people that doesn’t have an extensive public transportation system, that has more cars on the road than it can handle. There are two bridges from Europe to Asia; during the post-work rush, you can expect to be stuck in transit on those bridges for HOURS. Turkish drivers are aggressive, but perhaps it’s to compensate for the helplessness they feel when they are stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic every day, hours from home. It’s even worse on a bus; when you’re standing cramped on a vehicle that barely seems to inch forwards, it’s easy to reevaluate why you went so far from home in the first place. Hopefully someday Istanbul will be able to address this problem effectively. They are candidates for the 2020 Olympics, so perhaps that will be an incentive to fix the traffic. For now, I try to plan my commutes around ferries and feet instead of buses and cars. And when I meet someone new, we know what to talk about. It’s the universal bond in Istanbul. How about that traffic, eh?
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