The Ankara-Sivas high-speed railway construction is on schedule and will be open at the end of May 2020, before the next Ramadan Bayram holiday, according to Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Cahit Turhan.
Turhan met with officials at the construction site in Köklüce on the Sivas-Ankara road on Saturday and brought up to date about the Ankara-Sivas High-Speed Train (YHT) project.
"Our goal is to connect Ankara to Sivas via a high-speed train line. Works on the Ankara-Sivas YHT line are continuing as planned. We are planning to put the line into service before the next Ramadan holiday," the minister said.
Turhan stressed that the government attaches special importance to the high-speed train and relevant projects, adding that construction is underway on the Ankara-İzmir, Bursa-Osmaneli, Mersin-Gaziantep, and Karaman-Yenice lines.
Further commenting on the ongoing projects, Turhan noted that construction is in progress on the Sivas-Malatya-Elazığ, Antep-Urfa-Diyarbakır line, the Eskişehir-Afyonkarahisar-Antalya line, as well as the Samsun-Kırıkkale line, the Kırıkkale-Aksaray-Konya line, and the Konya-Antalya line.
"After the completion of the projects in the coming period, we will bring these cities together via high-speed train," he said. "In addition, we started construction between Çerkezköy and Kapıkule on the Istanbul-Kapıkule and Halkalı-Kapıkule high-speed train lines last month.”
Once completed, this will be Turkey's second-longest railway line after the Ankara-Istanbul high-speed line. The 405-kilometer line will also constitute one of Turkey's most important axes of the railway corridor, connecting Asian countries on the Silk Road route and Asia Minor.
The railway line is being developed at an estimated cost of TL 9 billion and will reduce travel time between Ankara and Sivas from 12 hours to just two hours.
The project includes 49 tunnels, totaling some 66 kilometers in length, with the longest being around 5.12 kilometers long. It will also have 53 viaducts totaling 27.5 kilometers in length. The line will also include 611 bridges and culverts, and 217 overpasses and underpasses.
Another high-speed train line connecting the capital and the country's third-largest city, İzmir, is also nearing completion and is scheduled to carry its first passengers in 2019. The TL 4.9 billion project will cut down the current travel time of 14 hours by road to just three and a half hours.
Turkey plans to invest $76.96 billion in the rail transport industry, including infrastructure, over the next 15 years. Since 2003, Turkey has built tracks for high-speed trains and is currently engaged in constructing a rail network expanding over 2,000 kilometers.