The President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has inaugurated on 12 March, the Gebze-Halkalı suburban railway line, connecting Istanbul’s European side suburb Halkalı with Gebze district of Kocaeli province on the east.
“We have taken Turkey to a totally different position with not only its transportation system but also with its water, cleanliness, Haliç, public works, green fields, in short, with its everything. That is why as many tourists as almost its population visited Istanbul last year. We are determined to elevate Istanbul from the 8th place to the top in the list of the world’s most visited cities,” Erdoğan said.
The 76.6-km Gebze-Halkalı railway line includes the 13.6-km Marmaray line, that has been serving five stations on Instanbul’s both European and Asian sides, since 2013.
The Gebze-Halkalı railway line will significantly contribute to the relieving of Istanbul’s traffic congestion. It is estimated that 1.7 million passengers per day will use the new line. According to the president, the line will carry passengers that would normally require 100,000 vehicles.
Revamping the existing suburban railway line with a tunnel connecting the sections separated by the Bosporus, all sections of the project entered services.
“The trains on this line will travel under the Istanbul Bosphorus through the Marmaray Tunnel, and thanks to the railway lines built by Turkey’s investments, a train that departs from London will be able to travel to Asia and from there to Beijing through the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway line,” the president explained.
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