Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Taking the metro and tram from Istanbul airport

Ataturk airport gets an 8 out of 10 for the ease of a foreigner being
able to make it from the airport to the city center by rail/metro.
The signs in the airport clearly point to "Metro", and after buying a
"jeton" (fare token) from a booth for 1.40YTL (about US$0.90), one can
get on a clean, modern, uncrowded, smooth-riding train with many clear
maps showing the stops and connections to where you might want to go.
At the first junction (Zeytinburnu - sp?), a tourist can change to the
T1 tram after buying another jeton (bringing the total cost of the
ride to 2.80YTL ~ US$1.80), on which it is about 16 stops to the
foreigner-rich Sultanahmet stop (near the Blue mosque, Aya sofia, and
dozens of touts and overpriced everything). The number of stops and
need for two tokens (the electronic "Akbil" pass was not available for
purchase at the airport), we the reasons for not getting a "9".

Of course, on my way to the metro, at least one guy stopped me to ask
"why metro, take a shuttle! All metros are the same!". I only wish
that more airports in the US, India, or the Middle east had such easy
rail access from the airport to a walkable downtown. The US has gotten
better in recent years with Airtrain at JFK/EWR and BART at SFO, but
still leaves something to be desired when compared to even Kuala
Lumpur or Hong Kong. It will be interesting to see how well the Delhi
Metro (due its own post on the deeper blog) will eventually score on
the scale.

On the ride, about three different men stood up and offered me their
seat (seeing I was carrying a child). The Istanbul tram/metro would
be hard to discern from any other in continental Europe.

Sent from my iPhone

No comments:

Post a Comment