Marmaray Projekt
The Marmaray Project

05:00 Min., n-tv - auslandsreport, 20.12.2008

Railway tracks in both sides of Istanbul Strait will be connected to each other through a railway tunnel connection under the Istanbul Strait. The line goes underground at Yedikule, continues through the Yenikap? and Sirkeci new underground stations, passes under the Istanbul Strait, connects to the Üsküdar new underground station and emerges at Sögütlüçesme.

The idea of a railway tunnel under the Istanbul Strait was first raised in 1860. However, where the tunnel under the Istanbul Strait crosses the deepest parts of the Strait, the old-fashioned techniques would not allow the tunnel to be on or under the seabed, and therefore the design indicated a "floating" type of tunnel placed on pillars constructed on the seabed.

The technique that will be used in the Marmaray Project to cross the Istanbul Strait - the immersed tube tunnel technique - has been developed since late in the 19th century. The first immersed tube tunnel ever built was constructed in North America for sewer purposes in 1894. The first tunnels for traffic purposes constructed using this technique were also built in the United States. The first one was the Michigan Central Railroad tunnel in 1906-1910. In Europe, Holland was the first country to adopt the technique, and the Maas Tunnel in Rotterdam was opened in 1942. . In Asia, Japan was the first country to adopt this techniques and the two-tube road tunnel (Aji River Tunnel) in Osaka was opened in 1944. However, such tunnels remained rare until a robust and well proven industrial technique was developed in the 1950s, thereby allowing the construction of large-scale projects in many countries.

The desire to construct a railway mass transit connection from west to east in Istanbul and under the Istanbul Strait was becoming stronger and stronger in the early 1980s, and consequently the first comprehensive feasibility study was carried out and reported in 1987. This study concluded that such a connection would be feasible and cost-effective, and the alignment we see in the project today was selected as the best of a range of alignments.

The movie describes the construction site under the Istanbul Strait.