The opening date of the Ankara-İzmir High Speed Train (YHT) Project, which will reduce the travel time between Ankara and İzmir to 3.5 hours, has been postponed again. In the last 10 years, 45 percent of the project infrastructure has been completed. During the project phase, the minister of transport and infrastructure changed eight times. In the project that did not progress, the constructions stopped completely at many points.
The foundation of the Ankara-İzmir YHT Project, whose contract was signed on June 10, 2012, was laid on September 21, 2013. The construction of the 2015-kilometer line, which was first announced to be completed in 2018, but then delayed until 640 and then postponed every year, could not be completed for 10 years. The estimated cost of the project, which was foreseen as 2013 billion TL in the 3.5 investment program, increased almost nine times and reached 28 billion TL in the intervening period. 2 billion TL was allocated from this year's budget. For the first time this year, only one thousand lira was allocated from the budget for the 4 billion 794 million lira line that will connect Aydın's Ortaklar and İzmir's Selçuk districts, which constitute the important leg of the high-speed train line.
In the reports of the TCA, the shortcomings of the projects were stated one by one and their losses were revealed. AKP Deputy Chairman Hamza Dağ announced the previous day in Menemen that the high-speed train project would be completed in 2025. Pointing to the contractor company as responsible, Dağ said, “In February, the Ministry of Finance of the Treasury and the Exim Bank of England signed a loan agreement of 2.16 billion Euros and the work continues in three stages. In July 2025, the İzmir-Ankara high-speed train project will be implemented.”
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