ANKARA, Jan 9 (NNN-ANADOLU) – Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, yesterday, inaugurated a high-speed rail line, connecting the provinces of Konya and Karaman, in Anatolia.
“We are determined to make Turkey a centre country in railway transportation, like many other fields, by rapidly completing our current investments,” the president said, at the opening ceremony, in a train station in Konya, a major city in south-central Turkey.
The Konya-Karaman rail line will be one of the “important stages of the south axis of this big project,” he said.
Turkey will save 63 million Turkish liras (about 4.8 million U.S. dollars) annually, with this line, the president said. The 102-km line will reduce the journey time between the two cities to 50 minutes.
He emphasised that, the problems experienced in the sea and air freight transportation during the pandemic, highlighted the railways as a serious alternative.
Erdogan said, the length of railways in Turkey has reached 13,222 km under his government, and Turkey plans to further extend these lines.
Turkey will increase its railway investments, the country’s Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, Adil Karaismailoglu said earlier.
Briefing the Turkish parliament on his ministry’s investment plans for transportation, Karaismailoglu said, on Oct 19, that, the government had increased the share of the railway in Turkey’s investments from 33 percent in 2013, to 48 percent in 2021, and this rate will be 63.4 percent in 2023.– NNN-ANADOLU
