Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan to open rail project shortly
Iran, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan will inaugurate a joint rail project in the coming days, IRNA news agency quoted Iranian Railways Company managing director Abdol-Ali Saheb-Mohammadi as saying.
The project which is dubbed the Caspian Sea eastern rail corridor will officially come on stream in the presence of the three countries' presidents, he noted.
The rail corridor will be around 1000 kilometres in length, 140 kilometres of which will be in Kazakhstan, 700 kilometres in Turkmenistan and 90 kilometres in Iran, he added.
Iran's Minister of Roads and Urban Development Ali Nikzad said on Sunday that construction operations of some other railroads are underway to connect the country's railroad to that of neighbouring countries.
Qazvin-Rasht-Astara and Mianeh-Ardabil-Parsabad railways will connect Iran to Azerbaijan, while the Kermanshah-Khosravi and Shalamcheh-Basra railways will connect Iran to Iraq, he explained.
Construction of the Qazvin-Rasht-Astara railway is projected to come on stream by March 2014.
The Qazvin-Rasht-Astara railway is a part of the North-South transport corridor implemented by Azerbaijan, Russia and Iran.