Baku, Azerbaijan, April 17
By Khalid Kazimov – Trend:
A senior transportation official has said that the process of placing rails along the Qazvin-Rasht railroad will be completed within coming weeks.
Kheirollah Khademi, the managing director of Iran's Construction and Development of Transportation Infrastructures Company (CDTIC), has said that the company needs to lay 20 kilometers of rail along the railroad in order to connect the city of Rasht to the country’s rail system, ISNA news agency reported.
Khademi forecast that completing the Rash-Qazvin railway will take place in early May.
The railway segment is a part of the International North-South Transport Corridor, which is meant to connect Northern Europe with Southeast Asia. It will serve as a link connecting the railways of Azerbaijan, Iran and Russia. At the initial stage, it is planned to transport 5 million tons of cargo per year through the corridor and over 10 million tons of cargo in future.
In order to complete the mega project of the North-South Corridor, three railroad segments connecting the northwestern city of Qazvin to the border city of Astara should be constructed inside Iran.
The first segment is Qazvin-Rasht, which, according to Iranian officials, will be completed in the coming weeks.
The second segment, connecting the cities of Rasht and Astara, is expected to be constructed within three years with Azerbaijan’s financial aid.
In the meantime, the sides have already inaugurated the Astara-Astara segment, which connects the two border cities of the same name in Iran and Azerbaijan.
