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Istanbul and Mexico City are two congested cities. There was no solution, there was a
negative cycle, both cities said there is no money for major investment, so we stay
like that. Metrobús proved that these systems can attract big crowds with a good quality
of service. That demand is attractive to the private sector. Once Metrobús was introduced
all of a sudden we had the restaurants start to come back to Insurgentes, people started
walking on the sidewalks, the streets became more alive. It's one alternative that allows
people to get around faster, more comfortably, more efficiently, more safely, and they can
have this alternative to improve their mobility. One problem that we have in the city is the
excessive quantity of automobiles.Therefore, emissions and the time that it takes people
to make trips are very very big. In order to improve the air quality in a city you have
to act on transport, and by that I mean you have to reduce the use of private vehicles
and increase the use of public transport. Metrobús in Mexico it's healthier because
it tends to be there less time, so the exposure to pollutants is reduced. Metrobús introduced
low emission buses, it introduced intelligent transport systems, it introduced an electronic
fare card. In Metrobús we have around 900,000 people being transported every day not only
because they have to use it, sometimes its also because they decide to use it, which
is very important. I use the system a lot. It's a way of quickly getting to places where
I want to go. It's comfortable, safe and fast. What's been seen in the application and development
of BRT corridors in terms of road safety is an important improvement. It's been calculated
that there has been a reduction of accidents by up to 80% after implementation. Today it's
much safer. It's much safer to walk or to cross a street that has a Metrobús line.
People know where it stops. People know where the crosswalks are. Everyday you see more
people on bicycles, more people going to work using public transportation. I believe that
Metrobús has been a project that has changed the face of the city. Istanbul Metrobüs is
52 kilometers with 42 stations and fully-dedicated single continuous lanes. We carry 750,000
people in a day. Through the BRT system in Istanbul people will save 28 days over the
course of a year. So we can say that they receive their February back. As you can imagine
with a city of about 15 million its really hard to get around with cars. To cross the
bridge from Asia to Europe with a car it could take one and a half hour, with Metrobüs it's
only like 15 minutes. When the BRT was introduced accident numbers fell between 30 and 40 percent,
so this is a huge saving in accidents. It's a huge saving in money terms as well. In the
first phase of Metrobüs over 20,000 cars were removed from the road. More than 600
tons of carbon emissions are reduced. The BRT has a big advantage, it's a relatively
cheap option for a mass transport system. Other transit systems are not as widely used
or well perceived as Metrobús. I think the city is in a new era.