Expansion of high-speed rail network boosts station construction

Çilem Kaya Açık ANKARA

The construction of the station in Ankara is planned to be finished by 2016.

Turkey’s sprawling high-speed railway network will also boost train station construction across the country, as a total of 21 new stations are planned at routes through which trains pass.

With the opening of the high-speed railway line between Ankara and Istanbul – Turkey’s two most populous cities – the railways are hoped to emerge as favorable transportation alternatives, regaining a title they had lost to land road transportation dozens of years ago.  

As the number of passengers carried on high-speed railway lines is expected to skyrocket to 79 million by 2016, the government is planning to ramp up the number of stations that could meet this mounting demand.

At the first stage, stations at Ankara, Eskişehir, Bilecik, Bozöyük, Sapanca, Arifiye and Pamukova are planned to be renewed to meet initial demand.

In the upcoming period, new stations at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gökçen airport and Söğütlüçeşme will be linked to the existing lines.

Turkey’s long-awaited high-speed railway line between the capital, Ankara, and the financial capital of Istanbul was inaugurated at a large ceremony on July 25.

Three lines at Ankara-Eskişehir, Ankara-Konya and Konya-Eskişehir are already operating. And with the completion of three more new routes between Bilecik-Bursa, Ankara-Sivas and Ankara-İzmir, a total of 11 provinces will be linked with each other through high-speed trains.

The station in Ankara, the construction of which is planned to be finished by 2016, comes particularly to the fore with its modernized design plan.

The city has been designated as the capital of high-speed railway networks, with around 30 million passengers expected to travel via Ankara.

The Ankara station is planned to serve 20,000 passengers at first and its capacity is expected to be raised to 50,000 in the near future. It will have six railway lines to load and unload passengers and freights and will have three 400-meter-long new passenger platforms.

The station is planned to be connected with three subway lines in the city and to Esenboğa Airport.
The new stations will not only be bigger to accommodate soaring demand, they will also be more sensitive of the passengers’ needs, said officials from the Turkish state railways authority, TCDD.

They said the station buildings will house many sections allocated for passengers’ different needs.
The TCDD is also planning for lifts and platforms to facilitate disabled passengers’ access to the stations.