Iran opening key rail line to shorten travel time to Tabriz

Iranian President Seyyed Ebrahim Raeisi is to open a key rail line in the northwest of the country that will shorten travel time to the metropolitan city of Tabriz by several hours.

According to a Thursday report by IRNA, the 44-kilometer rail link between the cities of Bostanabad and the industrial town of Khavaran, located 29 kilometers from Tabriz, will come on line in a ceremony attended by President Raeisi on Friday.

The report said that the railway project is a major part of Iran’s East-West transport corridor and will play a key role in the country’s plans to accommodate larger volumes of international cargo transit.

It said the link is part of a larger line that connects the cities of Mianeh and Tabriz via rail, a project for which successive governments in Iran have allocated some 200 trillion rials ($400 million) in investment over the past 20 years.

Once it is fully finished, the Mianeh-Tabriz railway will shorten travel time via rail between the Iranian capital Tehran and Tabriz, a city of nearly 2 million, by four hours.

The complicated project has mostly relied on domestic resources, including for railway tracks that have been manufactured by Iranian steel mills.

The double-track railway passes through a 3-kilometer tunnel, the longest rail tunnel in Iran and a 1-kilometer arch bridge, again the largest in Iran’s railway network, said the report by the IRNA. 

ME