Turkey to launch its third high-speed train line

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will inaugurate on Saturday Turkey's third high-speed train that links up the central cities of Eskisehir and Konya with four round trips daily. The new line completes a three-city network with an existing route between capital Ankara and Eskisehir, and another one between Ankara and Konya. Turkey's high-speed train operations began in March 2009 with the Ankara-Eskisehir line which offers 20 round trips daily. The line has held 26,411 services and carried 7.3 million passengers so far, forcing inter-city passenger bus fares on Ankara-Eskisehir route to drop dramatically from 55 percent to 10 percent, while increasing railway use on the route from 8 percent to 72 percent. Services started on Ankara-Konya line in August 2011 and the number of daily services on this line is 16. So far, 7,825 round trips have been made, and 2.07 million passengers travelled on this line. After high-speed train started serving, the share of passenger buses on Ankara-Konya route plummeted from 70 percent to 18 percent, while railway travel increased to 65 percent. There was no train service on this route prior to the launching of the high-speed train line. Turkey's high-speed trains have carried a total of 9.4 million passengers so far.