Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Abdulkadir Uraloğlu spoke at the Gebze-Darıca Metro line Test Drive program.
Highlights from Minister Uraloğlu's speech are as follows:
“When we leave Gebze, we are talking about a length that will reach Sinop, Antalya or, by crossing our borders, Sofia.
Our Gebze Organized Industrial Zone-Darıca Coastal Line project is one of the three important rail system projects we have implemented in Kocaeli.
Last year, we opened our 3,1-kilometer Kocaeli City Hospital Tram Line. We completed the construction of our line in less than 1,5 years and quickly put it into service for our metropolitan municipality and our people. Thanks to our line, the transportation time to Kocaeli City Hospital has decreased to only 15 minutes.
We delivered the site to the contractor for the first stage of the Northern Light Rail System line, which is another urban transportation project we carry out with our Kocaeli Metropolitan Municipality, on June 27, 2024. We planned this first stage to have an important place in Kocaeli's strategic network.
The line will start from TÜPRAŞ PETKİM and pass through Derince district, then pass through Millet Bahçesi and SEKA Park before reaching the city center. After the city center, it will stop by the bus station and end at İzmit East Station.
We are currently continuing with station shaft and depot site layout studies on the route, interaction studies with existing planned infrastructure facilities, and infrastructure decontamination operations.
We are currently building our 15,4-kilometer Gebze OSB-Darıca Sahil line, which we are rapidly continuing construction work on, as a double line. It will serve 90 thousand passengers with 11 stations with a design speed of 330 kilometers.
We will complete all work on our line and put it into service in the second half of 2026.
With the completion of the line, the economic gain will be over 25 billion 2 million euros in the 734-year projection, with factors such as highway operation and maintenance gains, external benefits such as air pollution and time gains.
The overall progress rate in our project is currently 86 percent. We have completed the installation of 78 meters of our total rail amount of 922 meters.
We designed our trains in accordance with modern technology, fully driverless, with a 60 percent local content requirement, and we have received all 28 vehicles.”
