TEHRAN – Some 3956 kilometers of roads and railways worth 240 trillion rials (about $5.7 billion) are going to be inaugurated throughout the country by the end of the Iranian calendar year 1400 (March 2022), Iran’s Deputy Transport Minister Kheirollah Khademi said.

According to Khademi, over 3400 km of new railways are under construction across the country, of which eight projects with a length of 1560 km are the Transport Ministry’s priority, IRIB reported.

Meanwhile, in the road sector, 1345 km of freeways and 7,800 km of highways are also under construction.

Based on Iranian law, railways and highways must be built entirely by using government funding, and freeways can be constructed with the participation of the government and the private sector.

Khademi who is the head of Iran’s Construction and Development of Transportation Infrastructures Company (CDTIC), mentioned Khaf-Herat railway, Tehran-Qom-Isfahan railway, and Isfahan Eastern Freeway as some of the major projects underway in the mentioned sectors.

The official noted that the Khaf-Herat railway project is going to be inaugurated in the near future.

“The Iranian side was ready to put this route into operation in November, but due to the unpreparedness of the Afghan side, the operation of this route was postponed,” he explained.

“This route has a capacity of transferring three million tons of goods in the first year of its twenty-year horizon, this capacity will increase by one million passengers and six million tons of cargo per year.”

Back in May Khademi had announced that seven prioritized railway projects with a total length of 1,660 kilometers were going to be inaugurated by the end of the year 1400.

According to the official, Chabahar-Zahedan railway, Yazd-Eghlid, Bostanabad-Tabriz, and Khaf-Herat railways were among the top prioritized projects for the next two years.

He also said that six prioritized freeways projects with a total length of 550 km were planned to be inaugurated by the mentioned year.

“With these new freeways going operational, the length of the country's freeways will increase by nearly 25 percent,” he had said.

Khademi further noted that of the country’s total 38,000 kilometers of arterial roads, about 18,000 kilometers are highways and about 2400 kilometers are freeways.

EF/MA