Azerbaijan to buy railroad passenger cars from Swiss company
By Aynur Jafarova
Azerbaijan's Transport Ministry and Swiss's Stadler Company are planning to sign an agreement on purchase of new railroad passenger cars.
The news was announced by the Head of the Public Relations Department of the Transport Ministry Namig Hasanov on June 11.
"Azerbaijan will purchase some 30 new railroad passenger cars under this agreement," he told journalists. "The new cars will be purchased under the state program for development of Azerbaijan's railway transport for 2009-2014."
He noted this year is a deadline for implementation of the state program, but despite this, a new state program is currently under development and it is likely to cover a five-year period.
The new passenger cars will be used after commissioning the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway. Azerbaijan plans to put this railway into operation in 2015.
Hasanov went on to add that the works carried out in this project are at the final stage both on Georgian and Turkish territories.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is a regional rail link project that connects Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey.
The total length of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is 826 kilometers (about 513 miles). After commissioning the railway, mutual trade between Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey will increase significantly and the total volume will exceed $10 billion per year.
The Stadler Company is developing a project on the construction of a passenger car plant in Azerbaijan's second largest city, Ganja. The plant will build and repair passenger wagons.
The construction of a new plant on the basis of a wagon depot in Ganja is expected to start in 2014.
The passenger cars of Azerbaijan Railways are currently repaired abroad, particularly in Ukraine and Russia, due to the lack of the necessary infrastructure.
The Swiss Stadler Rail Group, with its ten sites in Bussnang, Altenrhein, Winterthur (Switzerland), Berlin (Germany), Siedlce (Poland), Pusztaszabolcs, Szolnok (Hungary), Czech Republic (Prague), Italy (Meran), and Algiers (Algeria), is focused on regional and suburban service markets, regional express railway services, and streetcars.
Stadler Rail has positioned itself as a supplier, complementing global rail vehicle builders such as Alstom, Bombardier, and Siemens.