Light rail and subways in Turkey
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Foreword
This web site could not be complete without a few words about urban transit. Indeed, the past ten years had been very rich in light rails and metro projects. These projects are the proof that rail is still alive and that major projects can still be completed in reasonable time in Turkey.
Urban Transit is very dynamic and the pictures is changing very quickly. New infrastructure and rolling stock are appearing in almos every large Turkish cities. The purpose of this page is to keep track of these changes aas well as to give some basic historical facts.
Turkish urban transit is documented on the Internet. For advanced information, I recommend a visit to Urbanrail or to Subway.net. These excellent sites keep detailed track of facts regarding Turkish cities and provide a whole load of links.
Overview
In the old days, the 19th century that is, only Istanbul and Izmir citizens could enjoy ridding an electric tramway. But just like most west Europeans counterparts, these networks fell out of fashion and were scrapped in the 1950's.
Until about 1990, Turkey had absolutely no rail urban transit system. This was an anachronism when Istanbul was already in the vicinity of 10 million inhabitants, and several other cities had passed the 1 million souls threshold. At this time, lots of cities started addressing their transportation problems and prepared master plan based on rail backbone and bus feeders. Very pragmatic projects were started quickly and finished successfully. A decade later, in 2000, several cities had lines up and running. Many more projects are in the pipe and the next decade should see yet more cities with rail systems.
It is interresting to see also that the whole array of systems is used: heavy metro, light metro, tramway and even a new funicular in Istanbul.
Existing systems
| City | Type of system | Openning year | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adana | Heavy rail | 2002 | In operation |
| Antalya | Tramway | 1999 | In operation |
| Ankara | 1 line heavy rail metro 1 line light rail | 30 August 1996 | In operation, work in progress on extensions. |
| Bursa | Light rail | 2001 | In operation |
| Istanbul | Heavy rail light rail tramways funicular | 1989 | In operation |
| Eskisehir | 2 lines light rail | 2004 | In operation |
| Gaziantep | In Operation | ||
| Izmir | heavy rail tramways | 25 August 2000 9 April 2017 | In operation |
| Izmit? | Tramway | 16 June 2017 | In operation |
| Konya | Light rail (tramway) | September 1992 | In operation |
| Kayseri | Light rail (tramway) | 2009 | In operation |
| Samsun | Light rail | 2010 | In operation |