Design for Living: The e-scooters of Istanbul

In Istanbul as in other cities, micromobility works well when the city provides the infrastructure.

Cities don't get more car-centric than Istanbul. Last year this city of 16 million had the most congested traffic in the world, according to data from the GPS system TomTom. A trip at peak congestion takes 62 per cent longer than during "normal" conditions. A few years ago, the average vehicle trip in Istanbul took 30 minutes. Now, it takes 45.

And yes, shocking as it may seem, this boom in driving directly correlates to the growth in roads. Turkey's transport planning is run by roading engineers, so the country is midway through a 10-year programme to quadruple its motorway capacity. Much of that growth centres on Istanbul.

More roads equals more driving. It's that simple.

Especially because the city's public transit system isn't efficient enough and there aren't even enough taxis. Meanwhile, health problems related to air pollution account for 27 per cent of the country's medical costs.

Istanbul: the worst congestion in the world.

Yet there are glimmers of hope. E-scooters arrived in Istanbul in 2019 and already there are 36,000 of them - the take-up is higher than in almost every city in Europe. Berlin has 30,000, Rome a mere 14,000.

People complain - of course they do - but the real problem, as always, is the traffic. Cars are so dominant, even the foothpaths tend to be narrow and barely fit for purpose.

The authorities are slowly responding: cycleways have appeared and more are planned. Despite all the motorway construction, it's no longer credible to look at Istanbul traffic and believe that if they could just build enough roads, people will be able to drive themselves out of the mess.

Micromobility and transit are a critical part of the answer. E-scooters, bikes, buses and light rail. Istanbul has started to get serious about them all.

The largest micromobility company is Marti Ileri Teknoloji AS. It operates a fleet of nearly 50,000 e-scooters, mopeds and e-bikes in Turkish cities and its app has been downloaded 5.6 million times.

A third of all Marti's e-scooter rides are to or from a public transit station. The rest are full journeys in their own right.

"The goal is to be an end-to-end transportation alternative," says co-founder Oguz Alper Oktem. "When somebody gets out of their apartment, you want them to just take out the Marti app, look at it and be like, 'Oh, I'm gonna go 12km to that destination, let me take an e-bike. I'm gonna go a couple of kilometres to the grocery store, let me take a scooter.'"

You're taking a risk, riding a scooter on an Istanbul road.

Micromobility is like the chicken and infrastructure the egg, with the usual question: which comes first? In Istanbul, the micromobility chicken has definitely come first.

But the egg has to follow close behind. Istanbul will find it immensely difficult, but without safe lanes for scooters and bikes, that chicken will not be able to cross the road.

Besides, what's the alternative? If it's EVs, which encourage everyone to keep driving everywhere, cities like Istanbul will grind to a complete halt.

Design for Living, a series devoted to bright ideas that make cities better, appears weekly in Canvas.