New fast train to reduce Istanbul-Ankara travel time to 1.5 hours

ISTANBUL

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A new fast train linking Ankara and Istanbul will reduce the duration of the travel between the two cities to 90 minutes, the Turkish State Railways’ (TCDD) general manager has said, daily Milliyet reported.

"We are planning to directly link Ankara and Istanbul over the third bridge. Then the travel time will be brought down to one-and-a-half hours. It costs 10 billion dollars, it is expensive," TCDD General Manager Süleyman Karaman said. "That's why we preferred to built the Eskişehir connection line in the first phase, which cost 4 billion dollars."

The travel time will first be reduced to three hours beginning in 2014 after the Eskişehir project is completed at the end of next year, reports said.

Some 30 kilometers of the Eskişehir-İnönü stretch of the line have already been built, while the 276-kilometer stretch from Ankara to Eskişehir was completed in 2009.

The Council of State approved the project after a four-year trial, Karaman said following questions about delays to the project.

"We waited four years. We had losses of 10 percent while trying to make the state earn 1 percent," Karaman said.