The 153-kilometre Çerkezköy–Kapıkule high-speed railway is set for inauguration on Friday 9 October. Despite high-speed rail mostly being beneficial for passenger traffic, this line will have tangible benefits for freight as well. Türkiye clearly finds it important: President Erdoğan will even attend the opening ceremony.
The new railway leads to Bulgaria and is therefore Türkiye’s upcoming rail gateway into the EU. It boasts a maximum speed of 200 kilometres per hour (for passenger traffic). The line has double tracks and is electrified.
Travel times on the Halkalı-Kapıkule route (Istanbul–Bulgarian border) will fall sharply. Currently, the freight transit time amounts to 8.5 hours. The high-speed line will reduce this to a mere 3.5 hours. Passengers can reach the EU’s outer borders from Istanbul in just 1.5 hours via the railway.
Freight capacity is also expected to grow. Currently, only 1.5 million tonnes can be moved on the route annually, but this is set to increase to 9.5 million tonnes, according to the Turkish transport minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu. As part of the project, Türkiye also added eight tracks to the Kapıkule rail yard on the Bulgarian border.
In 2024, 86% of Turkish rail freight exports moved through this corridor. The added capacity could give that an extra boost. Industrial areas in Türkiye’s northwest will get better access to the European market.
Criticisms
Still, the high-speed line does not resolve all of Türkiye’s problems to reach the EU via rail. Capacity across the Bosphorus Strait remains very limited at three million tonnes per year. This will only increase to 50 million tonnes with the INRAIL project (indicated on the map above in green), which will take years to complete.
Moreover, the addition of new tracks at the Kapıkule rail yard has been criticised. Bulgaria has not matched the same number of tracks at its side of the border. In practice, Türkiye cannot send more trains across the border than previously.
Bulgaria only has ten tracks available. The rail industry will thus have to wait a bit longer before the full international potential of the railway comes to fruition. This depends on rail infrastructure investments elsewhere in Türkiye and in Bulgaria.