BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 31. A new railway line connecting the western provinces of Hamadan and Kurdistan in Iran will be inaugurated on November 2, 2023, Trend reports.
According to data obtained from the Iranian Ministry of Roads and Urban Development, the mentioned railway line is the Hamadan-Sanandaj railway, which has a total length of 151 kilometers. Some 48 kilometers of the railway are in Hamadan Province, and 103 kilometers are in Kurdistan Province.
The railway passes through seven stations and has 178 kilometers of tracks, including the auxiliary lines. The railway project cost 34 trillion rials (about $810 million) and is now valued at 150 trillion rials (about $3.57 billion).
Reportedly, Iran has experienced serious devaluations in recent years. As a result of devaluations, the value of the Iranian rial has seriously decreased. So, at the beginning of 2018, $1 was worth 20,000 rials on the black market, but now $1 is 515,000 rials.
The railway features 29 large bridges and 411 small bridges and can accommodate passenger trains with a speed of 160 km/h and freight trains with a speed of 120 km/h. The railway can carry 600,000 passengers and 1 million tons of cargo annually.
In the future, the railway will also be linked to other provinces such as Kermanshah, East Azerbaijan, and West Azerbaijan, increasing its cargo capacity to 8–9 million tons per year.
The Hamadan-Sanandaj railway will be launched during the visit of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to Kurdistan Province on November 2.
Iran currently has 14,984 kilometers of railway lines with 978 locomotives, 29,305 freight wagons, and 2,153 passenger wagons in service.
---
Follow the author on X (Twitter):@BaghishovElnur