Inonou-Kosekoy High Speed Railway project
High Speed Railway projects have been associated with modernity and economic growth in recent times, raising passionate support and controversy in equal measure.
Inonou-Kosekoy is a section of the planned Turkish High Speed Railway network currently under construction, comprising 154 km of the 490 km of planned high-speed railway line between Istanbul and Ankara.
Funding for this colossal project (currently standing at USD 1,500 million) was enabled by a framework agreement between a number of international organizations. These included the European Investment Bank and The Export-Import Bank of China, by means of a buyer credit loan agreement. The Turkish Government also funded a minor percentage of the initial estimated cost.
CCCI consortium is in charge of the construction works and under this name a group of Turkish and Chinese contractors started site works in September 2008. The construction work did not progress as expected for the first two years, mainly due to a significant number of design changes and land purchasing allegations. The infrastructure works are now expected to be completed by the end of 2013.
A major constraint in implementing this project arose when the railway alignment clashed over the very active Iznik-Mekece faults. This key feature dictated major changes on some of the railway viaducts where seismic isolation systems were implemented at many locations.
The railway alignment runs on a variety of ground conditions and the topographical sites vary from low altitude agricultural land often subject to flooding to rugged mountainous locations. These challenging site conditions impose a number of costly infrastructure solutions, including:
- 26 tunnels totalling an excavated length of 41 km;
- 24 viaducts with a variety of spans (the longest viaduct length extends to 1960m); and
- 17 over-bridges and 42 culverts and underpasses.
When completed and integrated with the rest of planned Istambul-Ankara line, the Inonou-Kosekoy section will be expected to have achieved the following goals:
- Provision of an electrified double track line between Istambul and Ankara;
- Decrease the current Istanbul-Ankara travelling time from seven hours to just above three hours;
- Provide the back bone of an extension of the train services to the European side of the Bosphorous.
Lino Rivero, ICE Graduate Member in Turkey, has worked on this project and submitted it to the Newsletter.