Investigating optimum speed in high-speed railway: Istanbul-Ankara corridor

In this paper, optimum speed on high-speed railways is investigated according to total costs for the Istanbul-Ankara connection. This connection, whose feasibility studies are completed, will serve both passenger and freight traffic. The high-speed railway route, planned between Istanbul and Ankara, is a part of the TER, project (The Trails- European North-South Railway). The total cost investigated for this route includes the traffic independent (constant) costs, traffic dependent (variable) costs and the social (environmental) costs. At the end of the study it was cocluded that the optimum speed at which costs are minimised is 200 km/h for passenger trains and 90 km/h for freight trains.