The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway provided an uninterrupted railway connection from Asia to Europe, said Turkish Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Adil Karaismailoglu.
According to him, this line has become the most strategic connection point of the Central Corridor from Beijing to London and the Silk Road from Kazakhstan to Turkey: "BTK railway has started a new era in freight transportation."
"The BTK railway has decreased the period of freight traffic between China and Turkey from 1 month to 12 days. With the integration of Marmaray into this line, the transportation period between East Asia and Western Europe has been reduced to 18 days.
"A total of 1,133 trains, 20,819 wagons, and 1,290,000 tons of cargo have been transported via the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars line so far," added. Karaismailoglu.
BTK was launched on October 30, 2017. The line connects the railway networks between Asia and Europe. This 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 504 kilometers of the 846-kilometer BTK is in Azerbaijan, 263 kilometers in Georgia, and 79 km 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 a larger volume.