Turkey has cancelled an open tender for the construction of a third bridge over the Bosphorus straits in Istanbul after none of the participating companies submitted a bid, state news agency Anatolian reported on Tuesday.
Eighteen companies and consortia purchased bid documents for the tender for the construction of a combined road and rail suspension bridge, dpa reported.
These included Japanese companies Obayashi, IHI, Mitsubishi and Itochu; Russian companies Moskovskiy Metrostroy and NPO Mostovik; Austria's Strabag; Italy's Astaldi; and Spain's FCC, as well as nine of Turkey's biggest construction groups.
The bridge, which had been slated to cost in the region of six billion dollars, was designed to enable road and rail traffic from Europe to pass straight to the Turkish Anatolian mainland without passing through the country's main city, Istanbul.
Potential bidders are believed to have been put off by continuing problems in securing large tranches of project finance due to the ongoing Eurozone crisis.
Two existing road bridges link the two sides of Istanbul and auto routes to the capital, Ankara.
However both are frequently gridlocked with commuter traffic. Separate road and rail tunnels are under construction under the Bosphorus but both are slated to carry only commuter traffic.