Turkish State Railways to announce record tender for purchase of 106 new trains

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet

Transport Minister Binali Yıldırım announced last month that at least 2,500 kilometers of high-speed rail line would be built in the next five years to connect 14 different cities. Hürriyet photo

The Turkish State Railways will announce a record tender of 6 billion Turkish Liras in a bid to buy new trains, its director Süleyman Karaman said."The tender will include a total of 106 train units. As it is such a big tender, we will include the condition of establishing a train factory in Turkey and impose a 51 percent minimum local purchasing condition," Karaman told daily Hürriyet.He also said the tender had passed the Development Ministry's approval and was awaiting a last green light from the Council of Ministers, adding that the German giant Siemens and a number of Italian firms were showing interest in the tender."We are planning to organize the tender in two or three months," Karaman said.Turkey is currently renewing its train rail transportation system within the framework of a new development plan. Transport Minister Binali Yıldırım announced last month that at least 2,500 kilometers of high-speed rail line would be built in the next five years to connect 14 different cities.Regarding the under-construction Istanbul-Ankara high-speed railway, Karaman said that once the new rail lines were built and the trains were operational, they would adopt a price policy "cheaper than planes and more expensive than buses," noting that plane tickets varied between 80 liras and 400 liras.Karaman also assured that measures were being taken to avoid accidents such as in Spain a few days ago or recently in France. "We have sent two officials to France to get information about the accident. With respect to Spain, [the machinist] was going at a speed of 180 km/h when the limit was 80 km/h," he said.Six people died in a passenger train derailment near Paris on July 12, while 80 people died on July 24 in Spain's worst ever train catastrophe.