Negotiations with a Chinese company for the funding of Tehran-North Freeway’s third section have reached the final stage, a deputy minister of roads and urban development said.
“The construction of the freeway requires significant investments and we are looking for foreign financial resources. Once the funding is procured, the construction of this remaining section of Tehran-North Freeway will begin,” Kheirollah Khademi, who doubles as the CEO of the Construction and Development of Transportation Infrastructure Company, was also quoted as saying by ILNA.
Section-3 of the project is 47-kilometers long.
The freeway project, which will connect the capital city Tehran to the city of Chalous in Mazandaran Province, has been referred to as one of the most protracted development projects in Iran, as numerous deadlines for completing its different sections have been missed.
When complete, it will cut about 60 km off the existing route.
The mega project consists of four phases stretching along 121 km.
President Hassan Rouhani inaugurated the 32-kilometer-long Section-1 on Feb. 23, 2020.
Sections 2 and 3 pass, which through mountainous terrain, are not easily accessible and will take much longer to complete.
Roads Ministry officials have been quoted as saying that the Section-2 will be inaugurated within the next three months.
The final stretch of the freeway project, Section-4, which is 20 kilometers long, was inaugurated in March 2014.
The cost of the project, according to Global Construction Review, which was planned in the 1990s and originally due for completion in 2017, is thought to run into several billion dollars. In 2015, the World Highways website reported that the third section had an estimated cost of $1.5 billion, however prices must have risen since then.
At that time, China Communications was involved with the project.
According to the Tehran-North Freeway Construction and Operation Company, the third section will be commissioned on a design-build-finance procurement model.
China Railway Academy Company, a subsidiary of China Railway Group, signed a memorandum of understanding to build section three in January 2018, but withdrew after the administration of then US president, Donald Trump, reimposed sanctions on Iran later that year.
