The 13km-long Marmaray rail tunnel in Istanbul has been opened by the Turkish State Railways for revenue services, which links rapid transit lines between Asia and Europe.
The new $4bn rail tunnel, which commenced work in 2005, runs almost 200ft below the Bosporus seabed and is claimed to be one of the biggest transport infrastructure projects in the world.
The new underwater railway tunnel will now allow trains to operate at intervals of two minutes and transport up to 75,000 passengers per hour, easing traffic congestion and environmental impact in the city.
Turkish transportation minister Binali Yildirim was quoted by National Post as saying that the tunnel has been designed to withstand a 9.0 magnitude earthquake.
Equipped with Siemens’ signaling and control technology, the tunnel mainline service has been automated with the installation of the European train control system (European Railway Traffic Management System) Level 1.
In addition, the rapid transit services for the new tunnel have been automated by Siemens with a radio-based automatic train control system (Trainguard Sirius), electronic interlockings (Trackguard Westrace) and the operations control system (Controlguide Rail 9000).
The systems will assist in monitoring the traffic, while controlling the interlockings and the infrastructure.
In order to accommodate long-distance passenger trains services, the tunnel will be expanded and by 2015 it will be the first standard-gauge rail link between Europe and Asia.
With an overall length of 76km, the line will reduce travel time between the cities of Gebze and Halkali to around one and a half hours.