Get serious about safety, Mr. Yıldırım

Shortly after a high-speed train from Ankara to Eskişehir jumped the tracks Friday, Transport Minister Binali Yıldırım told reporters it was a simple matter of a switching problem between conventional and high-speed rails. “It’s not a serious matter,” the minister said.

We think it is very serious. Problems have stalked the fast train, or “hızlı tren” project from its inception in 2003. The worst accident came in 2004 when a derailment killed 41 near Sakarya. Blame was placed on the infrastructure since the whole affair is essentially an attempt to run the high-tech train on a low-tech track.

Compare this to the worldwide safety record of such technology. There has not been a single passenger injury or fatality on the Japanese “bullet train,” the world’s most famous high-speed train, since it was launched in 1963.

The gold standard for fast train technology belongs to France. Its “Train à Grande Vitesse,” or TGV, trains began operating in 1981. A new and faster technology, the “Automotrice à Grande Vitesse,” or AGV, was introduced as a successor in 2008. Again, there has not been a single fatality across these two technological generations.

And the world is fast-embracing these tools of public transport. China now has the world’s largest network of high-speed trains. The United States, a country as neglectful of its rails in the second half of the 20th century as Turkey, has a functioning network on the East Coast and has plans for a north-south line in California to open by 2020.

Trains are a civilized and energy-efficient way of moving people around. In an era of growing concern about climate change, crowded airways and airlines and unending problems stemming from the automobile, trains are the most logical of transportation modes.

Once properly completed, along with Istanbul’s Marmaray tunnel beneath the Bosphorus, the trek from the nation’s largest city to the capital will be just a tad over three hours. You cannot beat that with an airplane from city center to city center.

Other lines under construction include one between Ankara and Konya and another between Ankara and Sivas. All and more are needed.

However, unless public confidence in these transport systems increases, the huge costs necessary to complete this vision will not be found and passengers will not be pried away from their cars. The development of the Istanbul-Ankara line, for example, has been budgeted at 437 million euros, a figure sure to be exceeded. The newest 300-kilometer line in France cost 10 times that.

Rebuilding the worn tracks and patching up the trains slumped over the tracks just outside Eskişehir may, in fact, be no big deal. But restoring a wary public’s faith in this project will be. This is Yıldırım’s chief task, and comments like those he made Friday will leave him and Turkey stalled at the station.