Page 416 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 5

Dalkic, Gulcin. Tuydes-Yaman, Hediye. Delaplace, Marie.

for contextualization (Delaplace, 2012). The impacts of HSR cannot be understood without
considering the socio-economic characteristics of the areas it serves, in tourism as in other
fields (Bazin et al., 2013b).

3. Background on HSR and tourism sector in Turkey

3.1 HSR Network in Turkey

The first HSR line, Ankara-Eskişehir (ANK-ESK), started to serve in 2009, followed by Ankara-
Konya (ANK-KON) line in 2011. After the completion of the 155 km HSR corridor between
Eskişehir and İstanbul, Ankara based HSR service was extended to İstanbul (ANK-IST) in 2014,
followed by KON-IST services in the same year (see Figure 1).

Total HSR line length, annual passenger volumes and passenger-km until 2016 are presented
in Table 3 based on the most recent statistics by Turkish State Railway (TSR). Total ridership
has been increased from about 1 million to 6 million trips in 8 years; ANK-ESK HSR line
has been the most demanded service with a constant increase in the first five years of
operation. ANK-KON has also been used with an increasing demand in the first four years
of operation. But, KON-ESK line has not created as big a demand as the other two lines
(see Table 3) and the direct services were cancelled for this line (currently it is served by
KON-IST line) in 2015. In a TSR report, it was claimed that HSR shares in ANK-ESK and ANK-
KON corridors reached 70% and 66% and induced demand was generated in these two lines
as 12% and 18%, respectively (TSR, 2016). As a result, it caused drastic decreases in bus
shares (from 55% to 10% in ANK-ESK corridor and from 70% to 17% in ANK-KON corridor), as
well as private car shares (from 37% to 18% in ANK-ESK corridor, from 29% to 17% in ANK-
KON corridor).

Table 3. Evolution of passenger volume and passenger-km for HSR lines in Turkey
(TSR, 2016; TSR 2017a)

Years 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
Total Line Length (km) 397 888 888 888 888 1213 1213 1213

Total Ridership (x106) 0.94 1.89 2.57 3.35 4.21 5.09 5.69 5.90

Total Passenger-Km (x106) 237 476 665 914 1,186 1,554 1,847 NA

Ridership by HSR lines (10 )
6
ANK-ESK 0.94 1.89 2.15 2.00 2.27 1.92 1.28 2.20

ANK-KON --- --- 0.41 1.39 1.75 1.89 1.80 0.68
KON-ESK --- --- --- --- 0.20 0.25 --- ---

ANK-IST --- --- --- --- --- 0.99 1.96 2.20
KON-IST --- --- --- --- --- 0.31 0.66 0.68

Note: NA: Not available data.

414 360.revista de alta velocidad