A section of a high-speed rail planned to connect Istanbul to the Bulgarian border has been completed by a consortium of Italy’s Webuild and Turkey’s Kolin Group for Turkish State Railways.
The 153km line runs between Çerkezköy, a Turkish logistics and manufacturing district west of Istanbul up to Kapıkule, a rail and road crossing on the border with Bulgaria near the Turkish city of Edirne.
It forms the longest stretch of the yet to be completed 229km route planned to run between Kapıkule and Halkalı, a transportation hub near Istanbul on the European side of the Bosphorus Strait.
The electrified double track lets trains travel at speeds of up to 200km/h. Passenger and freight trains will use it.
It will cut passenger travel times from 4 hours to 1.5 hours, while freight transit times will fall from 8.5 hours to 3.5 hours.
An estimated three million passengers will use the line each year, up from 600,000 at present, with freight capacity estimated to grow from 1.5 million to 9.5 million tonnes per year.
It will form part of the Middle Corridor, a route linking Asia and Europe through the Caucasus, the Baku–Tbilisi–Kars railway and the Marmaray rail tunnel beneath the Bosphorus, a logistics axis for Eurasian trade.
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