Azernews.Az

By Amina Nazarli

The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, a regional rail link project to directly connect Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, will be put into operation in October 2017, Kazakhstan Temir Zholy Railway Company reported.

Kazakhstan Railways Head Kanat Alpysbaev was informed about this at negotiations during his working visits to Azerbaijan and Georgia.

During his trip to Azerbaijan, KTZ head Kanat Alpysbayev held negotiations with Turkey’s Minister of Transport, Shipping and Communications Ahmet Arslan, Georgia’s Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development Georgy Gakharia on further development of cooperation in the field of railway transport.

“Kazakhstan railway workers and our Chinese colleagues are waiting for the opening of a new railway, which will expand the geography of cargo transportation along the corridor with access to Turkey,” he said.

Taking into account the implementation of projects for the development of transport infrastructure, the potential of corridors passing through the territory of the regional countries increases many times.

This makes it possible to achieve up to two million containers per year in transit through the territory of Kazakhstan by 2020.

The BTK railway, construction of which began in 2008, is a corridor that will connect Azerbaijan, Georgian and Turkish railways. The railway, which is an important part of the Modern Silk Road, is aimed to improve economic relations between the three countries and gain foreign direct investment by connecting Europe and Asia.

The peak capacity of the railway will be 17 million tons of cargo per year. At the initial stage, this figure will be one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo.

Meanwhile, the first test train on the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) route left Turkey for Georgia on July 20.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli

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