New Metro line from IST to downtown - Opening Date?

Where are you going specifically? I don't know that there is a reliable projected end date, you can get to Kağıthane as of today. Depending on where you're going, even if the line was done you'd still probably have to transfer to other metro and tram lines to get to your final destination. It wasn't practical or appealing for me to use the metro to get to my hotel in Sultanahmet in September so I used a private transfer service.

I’ve not yet seen a projected completion date for the M11 Line all the way to Gayrettepe, and—considering the dire financial condition of the Turkish government—it may be years away.

CL,

I'm staying at the Millennium Golden Horn Hotel just on the west side of the Golden Horn bridge. After studying Google Maps for over two hours and struggling with the place names, it actually looks like if I just took the M11 to Kağıthane and got an Uber or taxi to the hotel that would be the best route. Gayrettepe seems too far to the east.

I used CityMapper to route it - looks like you can take a Havaist bus, line 12, to the Askaray metro stop, then walk from there. However the bus drops you basically in the middle of the freeway, so you'd have to take a long walk around to get to the hotel (you do NOT want to walk on the side of the freeway). Here's the bus page with info https://www.hava.ist/?lang=en Long ride though - at least 80 minutes on bus (more if it's rush hour). Your plan is also fine, though taxi will be subject to traffic as well the bridge was a wall of traffic when we went by. BTW Uber in Istanbul just gets you a taxi, not a private car. Make sure they use a meter and take your form of payment before you get in. Good luck!

I'm a train nut so we'll go with the M11. We arrive into IST at 6:05PM on a Saturday. If the traffic is as bad as you say, I'll continue to look at Metro lines we might transfer to so we get closer to the hotel. But I don't know how much patience my wife will have with that sort of horsing around after 12 hours on a plane. We spent a few days in Cairo last October after a great tour of Jordan and Egypt, so Istanbul's traffic won't be too much of a shock to us.

Thx for the Citymapper tip. I had forgotten about that app.

Sounds like you have a plan. Just FYI, the IST airport is ENORMOUS, even with carry on bags it still took me a solid 20 minutes to walk from the plane to passport control. If your spouse decides certainty > trains/waiting, Welcome Pickups worked well for me (door to door private transfer). All the best, Istanbul is quite wonderful.

The prices folks have quoted for a Welcome Pickups ride straight from the airport to a hotel (on the order of 35 euros) have sounded great to me. I say that as someone who avoids taxis like the plague, but also as someone who recently spent 24 days in Istanbul. This would be a great time to earn brownie points by getting your wife to your hotel in relative comfort. Trust me.

With regard to the airport: My flight seemed to be taking the land route to Thessaloniki as it traveled to the gate. It's likely to be a long, time-consuming trip from touch-down to the front door of the airport.

My understanding was that the orignal opening of the Kagithane to Gayrettepe section was September of this year, but it was postponed (it certainly wasn't open when we where there in October.) When I spoke to people in Istanbul, they told me the offical date was now planned for "early 2024". The further extension to Besiktas and Kabatas seems to have hit a snag where they have discovered important archaeological remains.

As we were staying in Kadakoy (Asian side), we took advice and took the Havaist bus from the airport - and it took 2 hours because of traffic (this was late Saturday afternoon). When we went back, we took public transport - and although I think it was 5 changes, we made the journey in around 90 minutes and probably saved a few lira. Istanbul public transport is easy to use and incredibly cheap overall.