Rail Turkey En

How is it that tickets are immediately sold out as soon as they are released for sale? Do travel agencies buy all the places? What is TCDD doing to make it possible for ordinary passengers to reserve sleeping-car places?

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.

I could see one reason why tourists would not use the Bosphors Express and that is the time spent crossing, entering and departing borders as well as when this takes place, in the early hours of the morning. Perhaps a daylight train leaving from the old station in Istanbul would be an incentive for tourists rather than travelling 25 Km to start the journey.