"8 thousand wagons with a total capacity of 650 thousand tons moved in Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway in the first three years," TCDD Transport General Manager Kamuran Yazıcı said at the 5th Economy and Logistics Summit held in Istanbul.
According to him, it is expected that 20 thousand tons of cargo will be transported with 500 thousand containers by the end of the year.
A Generation A Way project, initiated by China, lies from China to Europe, and the BTC railway line is located in the center of this corridor, forming the basis: "It is aimed to carry 3,2 million tons of freight annually in the medium term and 6,5 million tons in a long time on the BTK railway line. Passing freight trains from Marmaray, which enables uninterrupted rail transportation between the two continents, is a milestone in Turkish and international rail transport."
BTK was launched on October 30, 2017. The railway line connects the railway networks of Asia and Europe. It is the shortest route not only between the three countries but also between Asia and Europe. BTK allows reducing the time spent on cargo transportation by more than two times. The BTK railway facilitates access to European and world markets for Central Asian countries - Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan. A total of 506 km of the 846-kilometer BTK falls on Azerbaijan territory, 263 km of the railway line passes through Georgia, and 79 km is in Turkey. It is planned to transport 5 million tons of cargo in the first stage, 17 million tons in the next step, and then in a larger volume.