Turkey: 1.5M disabled use high-speed trains since 2014

KONYA, Turkey

The high-speed trains in Turkey have carried around 1.5 million disabled passengers since 2014, when the country’s railways began free of charge services for the disabled.

In the first 11 months of this year, 309,000 disabled passengers used the high-speed rail, according to data of the Turkish State Railways (TCDD).

Some 339,000 disabled people traveled via high-speed trains last year, while this figure was 297,000 in 2017, the figures showed.

There are four main high-speed rail lines in the country, which are Ankara-Eskisehir, Ankara-Konya, Ankara-Istanbul and Konya-Eskisehir-Istanbul.

Meanwhile, special desks have been established at 13 points of the train stations in order to ease the travels of the disabled.

In total, 52.4 million passengers have used Turkish State Railways’ high-speed rail lines so far.

In the first 11 months of the current year, around 7.5 million people used the high-speed trains.

*Writing by Nilay Kar