Construction of Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey railway nearing completion

Giorgi Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Especially for Vestnik Kavkaza

In the village of Kartsakhi in the Akhalkalaki region of Georgia the presentation of the Georgian section of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway and a ceremony marking the first test run of a train on the Tbilisi-Marabda-Akhalkalaki-Kartsakh route were held. The ceremony was attended by Economy Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili and Minister of Transport Ziya Mammadov, the director of LLC "Marabda –Kartsakh Railway" Oleg Bichiashvili and the governor of Samtskhe Javakheti, Akaki Machutadze.

Before going to the village of Kartsakh located on the Georgian-Turkish border, the Minister of Transport of Azerbaijan had met in Tbilisi with Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili. According to the press service of the Georgian government, the prime minister "stressed the geopolitical significance of the highway that will connect not only Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, but will become a bridge between Europe and Asia."

On the same day the newly built railway held its first test train. Thus ended the debate about whether Georgia would meet its obligations to complete the construction of the road section before the end of 2014. However the doubts were not groundless, as the construction of the railway, which began back in 2007, faced a lot of difficulties. However, there were no difficulties or problems of a political nature among them.

It is noteworthy that one of the "key points" of the new line is the city of Akhalkalaki, home to ethnic Armenian-citizens of Georgia. Many of them actively participated in the construction of the railway. Overall, 2,500 people are employed on the construction work, which is very important for Georgia, where unemployment in some areas is as high as 60%.

Azerbaijan allocated to Georgia for the construction of its section of road a long-term loan of 775 million dollars. Peak capacity of the railway will be 17 million tons of cargo per year and one million passengers.

CFO of the Marabda-Kartsakhi project, Gocha Chagelishvili, told reporters that the JSC Georgian Railway plans to buy the newest passenger cars in Europe. Now negotiations are underway with the Swiss company Stadler and the Spanish company Talgo.

But until that day when the people of Georgia will be able to travel in comfortable cars to Turkey and Europe (after the completion of the tunnel construction under the Bosphorus Strait), it is also necessary to purchase the equipment for simultaneous use by trains on railway tracks of Soviet guage and European model tracks, which are narrower in design.

But these works are not comparable in scale to what has already been done. At the request of Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili, the railway line linking three neighboring states will start working at full capacity at the end of this year.