COMSA has been awarded a prize for its work on the Ankara  Metro (Turkey) in the second edition of the European Rail Congress awards, an event held annually in the UK and which brings together the key players in the railway industry. More specifically, the organisation has awarded the company the prize for the Best medium-sized Railway Station in Europe, for the construction of the Necatibey Station, on the M2 line of the Turkish suburban railway.

The jury praised the complexity of the project and the technical solutions adopted by COMSA in its execution. With the appearance of settlement during the construction of the station’s tunnels, the technical team was forced to change its method of construction and opted for a “cut & cover” (or false tunnel) procedure, having to raise a series of anchored pile walls in order to continue with the works.

The jury also took into account the difficulty posed by the location of Necatibey Station, very close to the Turkish Parliament and to Eskisehir Yolu, the main access road to Ankara. During the construction of the terminal, COMSA minimised the impact of the work on the city’s traffic.

Pedro Miguel Rivero, Contracting General Manager at COMSA EMTE, was responsible for collecting the award on 11 June in London, in a ceremony attended by over 400 experts in the railway sector and in which companies such as Eurostar, London Underground and SNCF also won awards.

The new station at Necatibey is at a depth of 15 metres and has three lobbies, two of them connected by a passageway. The terminal has two central platforms of 140 metres in length which are joined at three direct access points and with the lobby via stairs and two lifts. Necatibey station is part of the project awarded to COMSA in 2012 by the Turkish Ministry of Transport for the construction of the Kizilay-Çayyolu (M2) and Batikent-Sinçan (M3) lines of the Ankara Metro with a total length of 64 kilometres and with 22 stations. Both lines are now in operation.