Two major rail projects will be completed in the next year of the local calendar (March 2020-March 2021), Iran's Deputy Transportation Minister Abbas Khatibi announced on Tuesday.
Iran's Deputy Minister of Roads and Urban Development for Construction and Development of Railways, Ports and Airports Abbas Khatibi said today that two rail projects will be launched in the coming year (to start March 21, 2020).
He put the number of major rail projects launched over the past three years at 5.
The deputy minister made the remarks in his visit to Doroud-Khorramabad Railway project and pointed to the new finances allocated to this rail project and added, “Sufficient financial resources are first defined for mega rail projects in the country which can accelerate construction of the project.”
Elsewhere in his remarks, Khatibi said that 30 percent of the total length of Doroud-Khorramabad Railway project has been equipped with a tunnel.
Over the past three years, five giant rail projects were put into operation, he said, adding, “Planning is underway for launching two giant rail projects in 2020.”
Last month, Iranian Transportation Minister Mohammad Eslami announced that his country is working on expanding its rail network by 1,500 kilometers in the next two years in a move to increase the country’s rail corridors share of the regional freight transportation.
Eslami said that the new railways would include high-speed lines, adding that some of the old and busy lines across the country, including those around the capital Tehran, will become double-track to increase safety and efficiency of the train services.
The new projects would increase the length of Iran’s railway network to over 16,000 kilometers, on par with countries like Kazakhstan and Spain and high in the list of 20 countries in the world in terms of the length of the railways.
The announcement came nearly a month after Iran opened a long-awaited railway near the Turkish border to facilitate south-north freight transportation.
Among the lines expected to finish until 2022 is a railway linking Hamedan and Sanandaj in the west and in the vicinity of the border with Iraq’s semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan.
Eslami said the highway network in Iran would also expand by nearly 600 kilometers by 2022, allowing more freight and passenger transport to take place across the country.
Iran has implemented massive plans for expansion of its domestic railway network while it has pursued plans for linking up to neighboring countries to facilitate trade.
Iran’s railway network has expanded rapidly over the past decade with four new provincial capitals in mostly mountainous regions connected to the network over the past six years.
Government authorities said recently that the average track-laying work across the country had increased from 120 kilometers a year in 2013 to more than 180 kilometers in 2017.