The traffic problem will not be solved with this mentality

The other day, I was sitting at a cafe in Beşiktaş. Situated in the midst of concrete, the owners tried to add some green to the environment by placing some plants in front of the coffeehouse.

The other day, officials from the municipality came and took the flower pots away. If these pots were not there, cars would be parked in their place. You know what they said? “This new pavement was laid for cars.”

This is the summary of our cities, in fact. It has nothing to do with political party A or B. With the exception of a few, all of them are worse than each other.

Our cities are planned according to cars. Whenever there is work on the pavement or roads, the justification is always to ease the traffic.

But when you start researching the issue, you see no one is going toward the right solution. Now I will tell you what Murat Çelik said found in the book of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, called “Green Transportation in Cities.”

Çelik says we are in a good situation as far as the increase in the number of cars: “There are 700 cars per 1,000 people in the U.S. This number drops to 550 in European Union countries, 350 to Baku, 130 in Turkey.”

Yet, our problem, obviously, is the fact that our public transport system is not sufficient and we don’t have proper city planning.

The use of public transport in Turkey is 30 percent according to the figures he provided. 50 percent of our traveling is done on foot. This ratio reaches 52-53 percent when you add bicycles.
When you omit travel by foot, 60 percent of “motorized” travel is done by public transportation, 40 percent by private cars.

These ratios are not that bad, yet because “we lack an...