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"The Turkish government continues to invest heavily in infrastructure development projects. The latest is a doozy. The biggest ever highway construction project in Turkey's history, featuring the second largest suspension bridge in the world, will link Izmir and Istanbul. The $11 billion mega-project is also the largest ever project undertaken in the build-operate-transfer model and will be transferred to Turkish control in 22 years.
The highway will cut the journey time from over 6 hours, to around 3 hours, and will also -- courtesy of the suspension bridge -- cut the time it takes to traverse the gulf of Izmir from 45 minutes to 6 minutes.
The main benefits of the project, which is expected to break ground in 2 months, will be to increase the economic output in the towns and provinces running adjacent and surrounding the highway Istanbul, Yalova, Bursa, Balıkesir and Manisa, the creation of 10,000 jobs (50,000 in the latter stages), and reducing congestion of the smaller roads the new highway will takeover from.
“It takes time to realize big projects. It took more than one year after the bid of the project. During this time, while companies, including consortiums have been continuing their meetings uninterrupted, [meetings] fundamental to the contract were held by the Treasury, State Planning Organization and our Ministry,” said Turkish Transportation Minister Binali Yıldırım.
Major infrastructure investments and developments like this have a proven track record of boosting property sales in a region, and the benefit for Izmir towns in this respect will be potentially huge, says Aydin Cakir, director of Turkey property specialists New Home in Turkey.
