THERAN - Iran’s Transport Minister Farzaneh Sadegh says the country would soon finalize a contract with China for a high-speed railway project connecting the capital Tehran to the second-largest city of Mashhad.
Sadegh said that the Chinese investor of the project would sign a contract with the Iranian side for the Tehran-Mashhad high-speed rail project during Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s visit to Beijing next week.
Sadegh said the Iranian government is determined to reduce the journey time on the 900-kilometer route between Tehran and Mashhad, which is one of the busiest railway connections in the West Asia region, and accommodates tens of millions of pilgrims each year.
Mashhad is also located on the Sarakhs-Razi corridor, a key east-west cargo transit route that plays a significant role in the growing transportation of cargo via Iran to and from the Central Asia region.
Iran’s railway chief said in July that the country plans to electrify nearly 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) of railways from the Sarakhs to the western Razi border crossing on the frontier with Iraq using the services of a Chinese company.
Jabbar Ali Zakeri said the project, which also includes double-tracking in some parts of the railway, is aimed at tripling rail freight transport on the corridor to 15 million metric tons per year.
Iran’s efforts to expand and modernize its east-west railway are aimed at increasing the country’s revenues from cargo transit, especially with regard to China’s One Belt, One Road, a multi-trillion-dollar project seeking to improve transportation infrastructures linking China to Europe, Asia, and Africa.