TECHNICAL ARTICLE – 2
Railway Crossing the Bosphorus Strait
－ Realizing the 150-Year Turkish Dream of
Connecting Asia and Europe －
Toru Sueoka, President of the Japanese Geotechnical Society / Executive Engineer,
Taisei Technology Center,
Hidemi Omi, Masahiko Tsuchiya, Fumio Koyama, Takashi Imaishi, Masahiro Iwano
and Kazunori Ito (Taisei Corporation)
1. Introduction
Istanbul, the largest city in the Republic of Turkey, is a historic strategic point connecting Asia and Europe, and it is divided east-west by the Bosphorus Strait. The Railway Project to cross the Bosphorus Strait (Marmaray Project) constructed a railway connecting Europe and Asia, with the objectives of relieving traffic congestion in the Greater Istanbul area that has a population of 14 million, and reducing the atmospheric pollution caused by this traffic. This project was a 150-year dream of the Turkish people, and in this article the design and construction of the 13.6-km underground railway project including the tunnel across the Strait are described. In August, 2004, construction by the Taisei Gama Nurol Joint Venture commenced, and in October 2013 the opening ceremony for the underground railway was held. The clients were the Ministry of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications of the Republic of Turkey and the Railway, Ports and Airports Construction Bureau, while the client’s representative was AVR which was a joint venture of the Oriental Consultants, Japan International Consultants for Transportation Co., Ltd., and YükselProjeUluslarası A.Ş.
2. Outline of the Project
Fig. 2-1 shows the location of the Bosphorus Strait, and Fig. 2-2 illustrates the route plan. From the civil and geotechnical engineering points of view, this project was a large project simultaneously using 3 tunneling methods; immersed, shield and mountain tunneling methods. Also, the project included the operation of the world’s deepest immersed tunnel, the world’s first direct submarine connection of immersed tunnels and the shield tunneling without a vertical shaft, so the degree of technical difficulty of the construction work was significant. As demonstrated in Fig. 2-3, out of the total length of 13.6 km of twin parallel tunnels, 1.4 km under the sea was an immersed tunnel, the remaining portion on land was shield tunnel, whereas the portion around Sirkeci Station was constructed mainly by the mountain tunneling method.
Download ISSMGE Bulletin – Volume 8 Issue 2 (pp. 13-20)
PDF format
