The 41-kilometer railroad connecting Gilan Province’s capital, Rasht, to the port city of Anzali has made 63% and 13% progress in infrastructure and superstructure respectively, which is estimated to be completed in the current Iranian year (ending March 2022), according to a deputy minister of roads and urban development.
“So far, 8 trillion rials [$32 million] of investments have been made in the Rasht-Anzali railroad project, which needs an additional 3 trillion rials [$12.1 million] before it is completed,” Kheirollah Khademi, who also doubles as the CEO of the Construction and Development of Transportation Infrastructure Company, was quoted as saying by News.mrud.ir.
Rasht-Anzali railroad is the continuation of Qazvin-Rasht railroad and has a significant role in completing the International North-South Transportation Corridor.
The railroad connecting the two Iranian provinces of Qazvin and Gilan was tested in 2018.
The route, locally known as Qazvin-Rasht (the capitals of Qazvin and Gilan provinces respectively), will extend from Anzali to the border city of Astara. The Rasht-Astara stretch is a missing link in the so-called International North-South Transit Corridor.
INSTC is a major transit route designed to facilitate the transportation of goods from Mumbai in India to Helsinki in Finland, using Iranian ports and railroads, which the Islamic Republic plans to connect to those of Azerbaijan and Russia.
The corridor will connect Iran with Russia’s Baltic ports and give Russia rail connectivity to both the Persian Gulf and the Indian rail network.
This means goods could be carried from Mumbai to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas and further to Baku. They could then pass across the Russian border into Astrakhan before proceeding to Moscow and St. Petersburg, before entering Europe.
INSTC would substantially cut the travel time for everything from Asian consumer goods to Central Asia’s natural resources to advanced European exports.
The multimodal route is estimated to reduce the time and cost of transportation of goods between India and Europe from 40 to 15 days. The corridor is said to have the potential of diverting up to 10 million tons of India-Europe trade to the route.
When the Rasht-Astara railroad is completed, the cost of cargo transportation through INSTC between Asia and Europe is expected to decrease by 30%.
Makam Pedram, executive manager of the Construction and Development of Transportation Infrastructures Company, says the Qazvin-Rasht rail route has the capacity to transport 3.38 million passengers and close to 10 million tons of cargos per year.
“Passenger trains and cargo trains can speed up to 160 kilometers per hour and 120 km/ph respectively on this railroad, which has 53 tunnels and 62 bridges collectively stretching over 22 kilometers and 9 kilometers respectively,” he added.
More than 14 million cubic meters of embankment and 18 million cubic meters of excavation were carried out for this project, more than 40% of which were constructed on mountainous regions.
The construction of Qazvin-Rasht railroad started in the fiscal 2005-06.
