Page 234 - Turkiye'de_Ulastirma

Routes, renewing railways that have not MARMARAY IS A
been touched for 100 years, modernizing
locomotive and rolling stocks, establishing
a national railway industry, improving inner-
city railway systems, turning our country to
a logistics base by connecting production
centers and industrial zones to railways and
founding logistics centers, and building a
new Silk Railroad that extends from Far Asia
to Western Europe, from Beijing to London
as priority railway investments.
We made the half-century long dream
of our country come to true; we fulfilled
the longing for High Speed Train in 2009.
Turkey became the 8th country in world
and 6th in Europe to move to High Speed
Train Operation. Our second High Speed
Train Route, Ankara-Konya, became the
high speed railway that is built fully by
local contractors and Turkish engineers,
completed in the shorted amount of time
and opened to use with the most economical
cost compared to its equals in the world. We
built a total of 1084 kilometers long railway
in 8 years among which 888 kilometers are
High Speed Railways. Thus we achieved a
railway construction figure of 135 kilometers
per year. And within this year, we will open
Ankara-Istanbul High Speed Railway, which
is still under construction, and offer it to the
service of our people. On the other hand, the
infrastructure construction of the Ankara-
Sivas section of the Edirne-Kars high speed
railway corridor that we planned continues.
And we began the construction efforts of
Ankara-Izmir high speed railway.
Moreover, we increased the total length of
renewed rails to 6 thousand 525 kilometers in
total by renewing 75 percent of our existing
roads within the last decade.
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GLOBAL ENGINEERING MASTERPIECE
We reached the last months of MARMARAY
that waited to be realized for 150 years, waited
for a government that can manage this for
150 years. We are putting the first phase of
MARMARAY into service as of October 29th.
We are introducing a global engineering
masterpiece, MARMARAY to Istanbul public.
Together with the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway
whose construction continues, both of these
projects form the golden rings of the Silk
Railroad extending from Beijing to London.
Thus while we open the most advantageous
transportation corridor between Asia and
Europe as Turkey on one hand, we also
bring the ancient Silk Road back to life with a
modern railway on the other.
AIRWAY SHOULD BE THE WAY
OF PEOPLE
As a result of the effective works we done
in the airway sector, the total number of
companies in the airway sector reached to the
number of 172. And by doubling the number
of planes in the airline transport, our number
of flights that was 160 in 2003 increased to
380. By also increasing its contribution to
economy, which was 3 billion TL, 10 times in
10 years, this figure exceeded 30 billion TL.
And the total passenger traffic, which was
34.5 million in 2003 including both domestic
and international lines, exceeded 131 million.
The domestic flights that are only offered by
Turkish Airlines from 2 centers to 25 points in
2002 are now being offered from 7 centers
to 52 points by 7 different airline companies.
And this figure exceeded 200 for international
flights. Our millions of people met with planes
for the first time and we achieved our goal to
make airways the way of people.