BAKU, Azerbaijan, Jan. 21
By Rufiz Hafizoglu – Trend:
The Ankara-Sivas high-speed railway will be integrated into the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project via the Sivas-Erzincan and Erzincan-Erzurum-Kars railways, the Turkish Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure told Trend on Jan. 21.
The construction of the Ankara-Sivas high-speed railway will be completed in March 2020. After the construction, testing of the railway will be launched.
The ministry stressed that the total cost of the project is 13.2 billion Turkish liras ($2.2 billion).
The construction of the Ankara-Sivas railway is completed by more than 95 percent.
The construction of the Ankara-Sivas high-speed railway will reduce the travel between Ankara and Sivas province by 4-5 times. It takes 12 hours to overcome this distance today.
The length of the Sivas-Ankara high-speed railway will reach 603 kilometers.
Presently, the length of high-speed railway lines in Turkey is 1,213 kilometers and construction of 4,000 kilometers of railways is underway. The research operations are also being conducted for the construction of additional 5,000 kilometers of railway lines.
The first railway in Turkey was built in 1860 in western Izmir province, its length was 357 kilometers.
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