Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu announced this week that Istanbul will have new metro stations – including the line connecting to Istanbul Airport – before the end of the year, an expansion that will strengthen access to the Istanbul metro in several key districts of Turkey’s and Europe’s largest city.
In statements reported by numerous Turkish media, the Transport Minister said that the urban rail system lines put into service by TCDD (Turkey’s state railway company) in metropolitan areas have significantly reduced the pressure on urban transport: “An average of 932,000 passengers are carried daily on the lines operated by TCDD in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Gaziantep and Sakarya,” he said.
According to the minister, the total length of the lines of Turkey’s urban rail system operated by TCDD reached 445.6 kilometres at the end of last year, and will approach 490 km by the end of 2026: “By the end of this year, we aim to increase the total length of the country’s urban rail system to 487.1 kilometres by adding 17.5 kilometres on the Arnavutköy-Halkalı section in Istanbul; 3.9 kilometres on the Emek-Bursa YHT-Hospital City line (in Bursa province); 4.5 kilometres on the Altunizade-Çamlıca-Bulevar Bosna metro line (Istanbul); and 15.6 kilometres on the Gebze OSB-Darıca metro line (in Kocaeli province)”.
Uraloğlu also provided details on Istanbul‘s rail and metro network, noting that there are currently a total of 238 metro stations in the Bosphorus metropolis, while 5 new stations on the Arnavutköy-Halkalı section of the Halkalı-Istanbul Airport metro line, 3 on the Emek-Bursa YHT-Hospital City line, 4 on the Altunizade-Çamlıca-Bosna Boulevard line and 11 new stations on the Gebze OSB-Darıca metro line are scheduled to be built by the end of this year.
The minister also highlighted the role of the Marmaray, which connects the European and Asian shores of Istanbul under the waters of the Bosphorus Strait, underlining that this underwater urban railway carries an average of 610,000 passengers per day on the Halkalı-Kazlıçeşme-Ayrılıkçeşme-Gebze route, being today a central pillar of Istanbul’s urban transport system.
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Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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