Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway

Baku-Tbilisi-Kars Railway

Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway
Locale	Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey
Dates of operation	Under construction (originally planned for 2010, currently 2017)–
Length	826 kilometers (61 mi) (new construction)

The Baku–Tbilisi–Kars (BTK), or Baku-Tbilisi-Akhalkalaki-Kars railway (BTAK), is a regional rail link project to directly connect Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. The project was originally to be completed by 2010, but was delayed to 2013, 2015, 2016, and following a fifth trilateral meeting in February 2016, the three countries' foreign ministers announced that the railway will finally be completed in 2017.

Passenger trains will feature new sleeping coaches.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project is intended to complete a transport corridor linking Azerbaijan to Turkey (and therefore Central Asia and China to Europe) by rail. (In late 2015, a goods train took only 15 days to travel from South Korea to Istanbul via China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia—considerably less time than a journey by sea.) The line is intended to transport an initial annual volume of 6.5 million tonnes, rising to a long-term target of 17 million tonnes.

The (Poti–)Tbilisi–Baku railway (the Transcaucasus Railway) was completed in 1883, and has since remained the backbone of Transcaucasia's railway network.

By 1899, a branch line (Kars–Gyumri–Tbilisi railway) from Tbilisi to Marabda to Gyumri (then Alexandropol) to Kars was completed.

In 1986, the construction of a 160 kilometers (99 mi) branch railway line from Marabda (on the Tbilisi-Gyumri line, 23 kilometers (14 mi) south of Tbilisi Junction) west to Akhalkalaki was completed. However, this branch fell into disuse at a later stage.

The project of a railroad between Azerbaijan and Turkey through Georgia was first discussed in July 1993, after the Kars–Gyumri–Tbilisi railway, which goes through Armenia, was closed. The new railway link is intended to provide an alternative route to the existing Kars–Gyumri–Tbilisi railway line, which has been out of use since 1993, when Turkey closed its border with Armenia to support Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia following the Nagorno-Karabakh War. A multi-lateral accord to build the link was signed by the three countries in January 2005. Because of a lack of funding at this time, this project was more or less abandoned. However, during the inauguration of the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline in May 2005, the Presidents of Azerbaijan, of Georgia and of Turkey evoked once again the possibility of building a railroad between their three countries.