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Date of BTK’s commencement announced

23 October 2015 17:04 (UTC+04:00)
Date of BTK’s commencement announced

By Vusala Abbasova

The full operating capacity of Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway was on the agenda of an announcement made by Azerbaijani Deputy Prime Minister Abid Sharifov.

In his opinion, an approximate date for the start of BTK operations will be in the third quarter of 2016, considering the ongoing construction work on the project.

The deputy prime minister made the announcement during a meeting of the 35th session of the Interstate Council on Aviation and Airspace in Baku.

The Turkish section of the railway will finally be launched no later than the first quarter of 2016, Sharifov said.

Along with it, the deputy prime minister believes that the full operation of Azerbaijani segment of the BTK railway will be aviliable in the first half of 2016.

Therefore, forecasting an approximate date, Sharifov supposes that the BTK railway route will be commissioned in the third quarter of 2016.

The railway's completion was delayed due to a range of reasons.

As is known, the BTK railway is being constructed under a Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement, so the timing of the work depends not only on Azerbaijan, but also other participants of the project.

Recently, Javid Gurbanov, the head of Azerbaijan Railways CJSC said that the Turkish side should have built a 75-kilometer stretch of rail, but to date, even the laying of the so-called upper part of the railway line hasn’t been completed.

He also noted that there are plans to start cargo transportation by late 2016, to complete work on the electrification of railway and create other railway infrastructure during the next year.

The peak capacity of the corridor will be 17 million tons of cargo, initially transporting one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo.

After the third year of operation, the projected volume of cargo under the railway line will be three million tons; five million tons after the fifth year; and after its tenth year, the railway could accommodate more than 10 million tons of cargo.

The BTK project will expand multi-modal transportation opportunities and ensure the growth of passenger and freight transportation.

Such capabilities have already attracted the attention of countries like Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

Azerbaijan has already ordered 30 new carriages from the Swiss Stadler Rail Group for use on the BTK railway, which will be available in next summer.

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