Istanbul: Turkey officially launched an undersea commuter train, while connecting the Asian and European sides of Istanbul Tuesday.
The tunnel, named Marmaray, will connect the two continents. It can carry 75,000 passengers per hour and around one million passengers per day.
President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended the inauguration together with more than 10,000 people besides the Bosporus strait, Xinhua reported. The government launched the project to mark the 90th anniversary of the founding of the republic.
The project aims to ease Istanbul's heavy traffic and reduce travel time between the two sides of the Bosporus to four minutes.
