Halfway down the Danube

Can't get there from here

In comments to my last post, Colin Alberts asked about international rail travel in the Caucasus.

Short answer: not much.

Back in the Soviet days, there was a pretty good integrated rail network. The region is very mountainous, but the Soviets loved that sort of thing -- big-ticket, concrete-intensive civil engineering challenges got them excited. So they blasted tunnels, threw bridges, and ran rail lines all over the place. By the time they were done, you could go from any town in the region to any other town fairly quickly. You could go to Istanbul, or -- in a roundabout way -- to anywhere in the Middle East. And, of course, you could go to Moscow.

Then the Soviet Union collapsed.

Armenia went to war with Azerbaijan, and the border closed. Snip.

Turkey supported Azerbaijan. That border closed too. Snip.

There used to be a rail connection between Armenia and Iran. However, it passed through Nakhichevan, which is part of Azerbaijan. Snip.

That left Armenia with no international lines except a single one going north to Tbilisi, in Georgia. From there you could still go on to Russia. Except that Georgia had its own problems: a civil war with the breakaway province of Abkhazia. With Russian support, Abkhazia ended up winning the war. The Georgian-Abkhaz border closed. The rail line from Tbilisi to Moscow ran through Abkhazia. Snip.

So what now?

Armenia still has its own internal rail lines. Many of them have fallen into disuse. Total rail-miles travelled dropped by 90% in the 1990s. They're up since then, but are still nowhere close to Soviet levels. There's no more commuter service; there are still a few inter-city passenger trains.

There is one international passenger connection: an overnight train to Tbilisi. If I understand this right, it's literally one single train that just goes back and forth, completing one trip every two days.

From Tbilisi you can change trains for Azerbaijan. But not for Moscow or for Turkey. There is no rail link between Georgia and Turkey.

(That last may change. Azerbaijan and Turkey want a rail connection through Georgia. Armenia absolutely hates this idea; Georgia is blowing hot and cold. Negotiations have been under way for a couple of years now. They might reach agreement later this year, or next year, or never... it's not clear.)

There is a lot of freight traffic on the Georgia line. Some large percentage of Armenia's imports and exports go by rail, and they're all going on this one line.

Road links are better, but still not great. The borders to Azerbaijan and Turkey are officially closed to road traffic. There's one two-lane road going to Iran; I'm told that it often closes for a couple of months in the winter, from snow in the high pass. So, the only serious international connection is through Georgia again.

To drive from Yerevan into Turkey -- legally -- you must first drive to Georgia (about 3-4 hours) then west across Georgia to the border (another 3-4 hours). Say 7 hours altogether. This is rather ironic given that the Turkish border is only about 25 km (15 miles) from here; when I look at Mount Ararat, I'm looking over the border into Turkey.

Anyway. One of these days I'd like to try the trains. Pure curiosity...

Posted by douglas at July 18, 2006 10:12 AM