Türkiye and Pakistan want to restart rail freight services between the two countries, transiting Iran. The last time that such a train operated was in August 2022, but it was discontinued due to a long list of problems.
The revival of the rail freight service should take place before the end of the year. It will connect Pakistan’s capital city Islamabad to Türkiye’s largest city Istanbul via Tehran, which is why the service is nicknamed ITI. “We had initially hoped to restart the ITI service earlier, but regional instability, particularly the war involving Israel, caused delays”, Pakistan’s Minister for Railways Muhammad Hanif Abbasi commented.
Pakistan and Türkiye are now involved in talks to discuss the goods to be exchanged on a revived ITI service. Once those talks are over, the goal is to relaunch the service by 31 December.
A long list of problems
After a decade-long hiatus, the ITI service was restarted initially in 2021, but was discontinued in August 2022. ITI struggled with a long list of problems: service quality issues, administrative delays, inconsistent schedules, and customs bottlenecks, writes The Diplomatic Insight. Floods in 2022 destroyed much rail infrastructure, which also contributed to the demise of ITI that year.
Minister Abbasi also identified high tariffs, unreliable schedules, and weak security protocols as obstacles to be overcome in reviving the service.
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