BTK has opened a new page in railway transportation between Asia and Europe
ISTANBUL
With the commissioning of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway in the field of freight rail transport in Eurasia, a new era has begun, Turkish Transport and Infrastructure Minister Adil Karaismailoglu said in Istanbul on Wednesday.
According to the head of the Ministry of Transport, the Median Transport Corridor, of which BTK is a part, remains the fastest and most cost-effective route for the supply of goods by rail between London and Beijing.
Karaismailoglu recalled that BTK is also called the “Iron Silk Road”.
“Thanks to the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, the delivery time of goods between China and Turkey has been reduced from a month to 12 days, and with the integration of the Marmaray tunnel under the Bosphorus into this transport route, transportation between Southeast Asia and Western Europe is carried out in just 18 days, “the Turkish minister said.
The head of the department said that 1,133 trains have traveled along the BTK since the opening, and the volume of cargo traffic reached 1 million 290 thousand tons.
According to him, the Turkish authorities are also paying attention to expanding the railway network within the country.
According to the head of the Ministry, in seven cities of Turkey (Istanbul, Bursa, Ankara, Kocaeli, Konya, Kayseri and Gaziantep), the construction of 14 railway lines with a length of almost 185 km continues.
At the same time, the domestic railway industry is actively developing in Turkey, Karaismailoglu continued.
The Minister noted that three local companies united in the TÜRASAŞ holding (Türkiye Raylı Sistem Araçları Sanayii A.Ş.) are engaged in the production of various fragments of rail systems in Turkey.
“By uniting these companies as part of TÜRASAŞ, we have given a new impetus to the domestic production of railway systems. We have turned TÜRASAŞ into the largest manufacturer of rail vehicles in the Middle East, ”the minister said.
