KAZAKHSTAN has begun work on another railway project to bypass bottlenecks and improve its infrastructure, as part of its plans to become a regional transport hub. Having only recently begun building a bypass line around its most populous city, Almaty, Kazakhstan began building a new line on November 27 to bypass Uzbekistan’s capital Tashkent and connect its remote Turkestan region with the rest of the country.
The new 152km railway will link Darbaza on Kazakhstan’s southeastern border with Maktaraal in the Turkestan region, running entirely through Kazakhstan parallel with the Uzbek border before reaching a new, third border crossing with Uzbekistan and terminating across the border in Syrdarya. In a second phase of the project, there will be yet another line connecting Syrdarya and the region west of the Maktaaral district.
The projects are part of the 1300km of new railway lines that Kazakhstan Railways (KTZ) plans to build over the next three years, as part of its ambition to become a freight hub for Central Asia.
Freight traffic between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan is expected to reach 31 million tonnes this year, a 16% increase over last year. International freight currently travels south from Darbaza to the Saryagash border crossing just north of Tashkent. However, so does domestic Kazakh freight to reach the Maktaraal district, which lies in a pocket in the meandering border between two countries. Saryagash is now operating at full capacity, causing congestion and delays. By diverting domestic freight onto the new line, Kazakhstan hopes to be able to increase capacity through Saryagash by another 10 million tonnes per year.
“Railways are steel arteries that ensure the development of economic and social spheres of our state,” Kazakhstan’s prime minister Mr Alikhan Smailov, said at the official start of construction.
The new line, which will have nine new stations, is expected to be completed in 2025.
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