The Baku–Tbilisi–Kars (BTK) , or Baku-Tbilisi-Akhalkalaki-Kars railway (BTAK), became operational on October 30, 2017. The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project is intended to complete a transport corridor linking Azerbaijan to Turkey (and therefore Central Asia and China to Europe) by rail. (In late 2015, a goods train took only 15 days to travel from South Korea to Istanbul via China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia—considerably less time than a journey by sea.) The line is intended to transport an initial annual volume of 6.5 million tonnes, rising to a long-term target of 17 million tonnes.
