Iranian president due to open key international railway near Turkey

President Hassan Rouhani is due to personally attend a ceremony next week in the East Azarbaijan province, located northwest of the country, to open a key railway that significantly boosts international transportation through the Iranian corridors.  

The official IRNA agency said on Saturday that Rouhani will be in the city of Mianeh on Monday to inaugurate the Mianeh-Bostanabad railway.

The report said the 132-kilometer railway is part of a larger line connecting Mianeh to Tabriz, the metropolitan capital of East Azarbaijan and a major business and industry hub in the vicinity of Turkey and the South Caucasus.

The new Mianeh-Tabriz railway would shorten the train travel between the Iranian capital Tehran and Tabriz by 114 kilometers while it would hugely facilitate transport between east and northwest of Iran.

Authorities said construction for the remaining part of the railway, a 42-kilometer line from Bostanabad to Tabriz, would conclude after March 2020.

Plans for construction of the Mianeh-Tabriz railway, dubbed the “missing link” in the Iranian rail network, began 18 years ago when the government sought to drastically shorten travel time between Tehran and Tabriz, currently Iran's sixth largest city.

Once finished, the railway would hugely boost cargo transportation from eastern Iran to Azerbaijan and Turkey and to continental Europe.

Iran’s railway has expanded rapidly over the past decade with five new provincial capitals in mostly mountainous regions connected to the rail network over the past six years.

Government authorities said recently that average track-laying work had increased from 120 kilometers a year in 2013 to more than 180 kilometers in 2017.

MG