NYC Day 02

Halloween in NYC

New Subway Station

Yesterday the new Şişhane Subway has opened. Well, kind of, the prime minister came, cut the ribbon and left but you couldn't ride it. It really opened to the public today. By chance our new office is near this new station so it's pretty cool. Check out the ribbons they put around. One every 20 meters ! Ridiculous. But the station and the new train are pretty cool.
Another section of the subway has opened, on the other end but is only active between 10 am and 4 pm with a train every 22 minutes which is pretty stupid since it goes to the business center which is pretty far and people going there go before 8 in the morning and come back after 6pm. The real reason is because they were late in opening this end of the line so ıt's just to show that it2s opened otherwise they're still doing the tests on it.

Metro Light

This week, while going to the post office with Emre, we saw this wagon on the Taksim Square. We decided to go inside and have a look. This is apparently the new subway, what they call here "hafif metro" and translate by "light subway" that will go from Başakşehir to Bakırköy. The reason is called light is probably because it goes on the surface and not underground. But it's just another tramway (a large one). You can see that they've put the tulip emblem on the outside. They try to put the tulip as Istanbul's emblem but it's also related to the empire ottoman and the link it shares with the actual government.
For those interested, it's made by Alstom and will soon be active (by july 2009).