New railway corridor through Northern Armenia

2026-06-11

As an alternative to the Trump route, Armenia announces the shortest railway corridor connecting Azerbaijan-Turkey Kars - Gyumri - Vanadzor - Fioletovo - Ijevan - Kazakh North.

Laura Sarkissian - Master of Journalism, founder of the “Armenian Crossroads” Telegram channel. Main direction - logistics, geoeconomics and geopolitics.

The recent statement by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan about the shortest route connecting the west and east of the country through the north as an alternative to the Trump route has caused additional excitement. Until now, the main emphasis in political circles has been on the so-called southern direction of the Trump route.

In such a situation, both the middle corridor passing through Georgia and its Baku-Tbilisi-Kars branch will have an additional competitor. Moreover, the area of ​​operation of the new Armenian corridor will move closer to Georgia.

Experts have long pointed to the need to develop other transport corridors. There is an opinion that the Trump route will not be economically profitable for Armenia, since the net profit from transporting one ton of cargo along the 43-km transit section through the territory of Armenia is not very high and amounts to only $1.

What practical prospects will the new transit route connecting Azerbaijan and Turkey passing through the north of Armenia have?

It is worth noting that the project on which the Armenian authorities have focused attention is not new, it partially operated during the Soviet era.

The new railway line in the north of the country - between the village of Fioletovo in the Lori region and the city of Ijevan in the Tavush region - envisages the restoration of the railway section (yellow contour on the diagram) and the construction of a new 32 km section between Fioletovo and Vanadzor (black contour on the diagram).

The northern route will allow crossing Armenia from east to west and will be oriented to servicing major international transit flows.

According to preliminary estimates, the cost of the new northern route may reach $ 1 billion. $ 500 million will be spent on the restoration of the Fioletovo - Ijevan section alone.

To create a full-fledged international corridor, a new 32 km section between Vanadzor and Fioletovo will form the framework of a short railway corridor in the northern direction, resulting in a corridor Kars-Gyumri - Vanadzor - Fioletovo - Ijevan - Kazakh, in addition to the northern corridor, reducing the distance between Yerevan and the Georgian border by almost 100 km.

The Fioletovo-Ijevan railway section was once part of the Soviet railway network, connecting central Armenia with the northeastern regions and later with the Azerbaijan SSR.

After the collapse of the USSR and the closure of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, traffic along the line was suspended, and in the 2000s, a landslide in the Agartsin region completely destroyed this section. In addition, the Meghradzor tunnel, once the longest in the USSR, remained inoperative and is currently being preserved.

The northern railway route through Armenia, passing through the Dilijan region, is a landslide-prone zone. The restoration of the track on this section requires large-scale engineering work to stabilize the unstable soil.

When it comes to the profitability of the northern route, much depends on the prospects for its integration into various local routes on the territory of Armenia, in particular, its connectivity with the Yerevan-Razdan-Dilijan-Ijevan-Kazakh section connecting with Azerbaijan.

The Razdan-Ijevan-Kazakh railway line was built in the 1970s and, compared to the existing routes through Airum, Jajur and Gyumri, the route has a favorable profile and less steep gradients.

It is important to integrate the northern direction into international corridors. According to expert assessments, Armenia already has its own railway line to Kars. Therefore, the opening of the Gyumri-Kars line is much more promising, since there is a wagon-changing station in Gyumri, where it will be possible to service European and Russian wagons without interruption.

There is a counterargument that large-scale transportation along the East-West axis connecting Azerbaijan and Turkey via the northern corridor of Armenia is currently unlikely, as competing routes via the Black Sea, Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan are already established and feature developed infrastructure, in which significant investments have been made. Even if the Armenian route is used, the potential cargo composition remains limited.

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