Salini Impregilo has won a EUR 530 million contract to build a 153-km section of a new high-speed railway between Istanbul and the border with Bulgaria.
The line will link the Halkali station to Kapikule, connecting the metropolitan area of İstanbul to the Turkish-Bulgarian border.
with a double track that will supplant the existing single track. It will be for trains that can travel at speeds of up to 200 km/h. The contract includes electrification, signalling and other auxiliary civil works related to the section of the line. The contract also guarantees the immediate availability of machines to move 80 million cubic metres of earth.
The line will belong to the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) that connects member countries of the European Union. It will be a part of the Orient/East-Med Corridor, which connects Central Europe with ports of the North, Baltic, Black and Mediterranean seas.
After working a year on the project, Salini Impregilo will lead with a 50.01% stake in a joint-venture with Kolin İnşaat Turizm Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş., a leading Turkish builder with which the Group completed the reconstruction of the Köseköy-Gebze section of a high-speed railway in 2011.
In March 2019, the EU awarded Turkey a EUR 275 million grant for the construction of Halkali – Kapikule railway line. The total project investment cost is estimated at EUR 1 billion. The grant is part of EU’s investment portfolio in Turkey financed through the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) funds for the period 2014-2020. It is the largest EU – Turkey financial assistance project.
The double-track electrified line will be designed for speeds of 200 km/h and will be equipped with the latest state of the art signaling systems that are compatible with the EU standards (ERTMS ETCS Level 1).
The double track line will have a length of 229 km and it will be built in two phases. The Cerkezkoy-Kapikule section, which will be funded by the EU, it will be constructed by the Gulermak-Alsim Alarko consortium and the Halkali-Cerkezkoy section, which will be funded by the Turkish government.
Turkey’s Ministry of Transport named Sweco as the engineering consultant to elaborate the detailed design of Halkalı-Kapıkule line.
The project is scheduled to be completed in 2022.
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