Istanbul North Rail Crossing (INRAIL) Project

project in planning

The project involves the construction of an alternate crossing of a 125 km greenfield railway bypass of the Istanbul metropolitan area. The proposed railway bypass would start at or near the Çayırova station on the Asian side and end at the Çatalca station on the European side, crossing the Bosphorus Strait using the existing track space allocated on the Yavuz Sultan Selim (YSS) Bridge at the Bosphorus’ northern end. The bypass is proposed as an electrified, fully signalized, mixed-use line designed to carry both passengers and freight. It will be connected to the Turkish national high-speed rail network, with an intended capacity for passenger trains to operate at a top design speed of 160 km/h, while freight trains will run at speeds of 80–120 km/h. The line will connect Istanbul Airport on the European side to the urban and inter-city railway network, as well as Sabiha Gökçen Airport on the Asian side. In this way, the INRAIL project will facilitate both domestic and international passenger connectivity between air and rail modes while simultaneously enhancing urban mobility within the Istanbul metropolitan area. The two airports will be the bypass line’s only stations, each with the capacity to mobilize significant passenger flows and to support multimodal logistics, including rail-to-air freight transfers.