Azerbaijan, Baku, 30 July / Trend corr. E.Ismayilov / Specialists of the Korean Railway has granted a project (cost $2.3bln) to increase speed of trains in the Baku-Boyuk Kasik to the Azerbaijani State Railway, Kim Nag Gi, a representative of Korean Railway system, said.
"We have proposed the third project to upgrade the railway system in Azerbaijan, and I believe that the country will show interest to this project," Kim Nag Gi said.
Before, SRA rejected the firs two versions of the project due to their high cost. The cost of the project was not announced
Korean companies propose to implement the project through three stages. The fist is to reconstruct the part of the railway from Ganja City to the Georgian borders, second - from Baku to Hacigabul and third - from Hacigabul to Ganja.
The project envisages increasing the speed of passenger trains to 150km per hour and freight cars to 120km per hour. The current speed of trains is 80km per hour.
The investigations show that from the economic point of view the project will be expedient to start from 2010. Tickets will be able also to increase as well.
If the project to be approved it will be implemented within seven years. Similar project may be developed for the railway to the Russian borders in future. The project is expected to be implemented at the expense of mixed investments - state, private banks and companies.
Before, Korean specialists proposed three versions - to make changes the existed one and to increase speed to 100km per hour, as well as to increase speed to 150km per hour and to 160km per jour.
The first version envisages investments in the sum of $2.7bln, second - $3.5bln and third - $4.3bln.
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