Rail Turkey En

I visited Istanbul in march 2015 and march 2017. Using the line between Ayrılıkçeşmesi and Yenikapı several times I’m very impressed with the system. Spacious trains, clean stations and cars and very affordable with the Istanbul kart. About me: tram driver from Munich/Germany, discovering urban and suburban railway systems around the world.

Passenger rail travel needs to be marketed and encouraged locally and abroad as a
pleasurable experience and a relaxed and leisurely way of travel. Dining car offerings need
to be upgraded. It is really a wonderful way to explore and enjoy the country. Bring back Haydarapasa!! What a fantastic way to leave and enter that wonderful city.

I would actually argue that even in electric cars, some of the responsibility for energy use lies with the car manufacturer and user. For example, the British government likes to say that it’s reducing carbon emissions, but sometimes the reason is because production has moved to China! In this case, clearly the emissions are still happening and the British government is still partly responsible, but in its reporting it’s able to make itself look more green. Some of TCDD’s energy impact MAY (I say may because I don’t know for certain!) be like this.
I think your report is largely very fair, I just wanted to suggest caution in interpreting the data. For example, because of the possible problems I listed in my last post, I don’t know if we can say for certain that TCDD’s electrification is worth a forest. In the short-term, all their hard work to prepare the railway may have cost a forest. I would also argue that we can’t say the decrease in fuel consumption means 80 million kg of CO2 have been prevented – some, most or all of this CO2 will still have been released, but just not from diesel.
However, I accept that in the long-term this is definitely a good news story that Turkey should be proud of and very important to share so thank you for reporting it.