Başkentray, which will provide high-quality commuter services between Sincan-Ankara-Kayaş in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, was put into service on 12 April 2018.

Aiming to create the necessary traffic capacity for operations concerning high speed, as well as conventional and commuter trains within Ankara, four signalled and electrified railway lines between Ankara and Kayaş, six lines between Ankara and Behiçbey and five lines between Behiçbey and Sincan have been constructed.

A total of 156 km of railway lines, one HST station in Eryaman (in the west of Ankara), 23 stations for commuter trains, 12 road underpasses and overpasses, 20 underpasses and overpasses for pedestrians, one cut-and-cover tunnel and 70 culverts were constructed within the scope of Başkentray Project, the length of which is 36 km. In addition, indoor commercial spaces were created in order to easily fulfil the needs of passengers in most of the stations.

With Başkentray, the travel time for commuter trains between Kayaş-Ankara-Sincan will be reduced from 59 minutes to 49 minutes and from 17 minutes to 11 minutes for high speed trains between Ankara and Sincan.

The headway for Başkentray commuter trains will be 15 minutes at the beginning and five minutes in the near future. Başkentray is expected to provide service to 520,000 passengers per day.

The newly-inaugurated project also gives passengers the chance to transfer from/to metro lines in various stations.

(Source: TCDD)