Highways, corridors, tunnels: Azerbaijan's road construction activity vector Review by Caliber.Az

About two decades ago, Azerbaijan started implementing a number of large-scale road construction projects with huge budgetary and borrowed funds. Since it has built and upgraded about 20 thousand km of local, inter-district, as well as international highways with access to Russian, Iranian and Georgian borders. During the last two years, the vector of road construction has shifted to the Karabakh region, where a new component of the Middle Corridor, the Zangazur route, is also being created. Work on the North-South corridor has also been accelerated: on December 23 it was announced that most of the reconstruction work on the deformed section of the Baku-Guba-Russian border road was completed, and the main work on the toll road in the same direction will be completed by the end of the year.

Amid geopolitical changes caused by the war in Ukraine and the weakened competitiveness of the Northern Corridor, which runs for the most part in Russia, the number of applications from freight forwarders, logistics companies, and road carriers from Europe, Türkiye, Central Asia, and China for transshipment of road freight along the Middle Corridor has increased notably. Almost all transit routes of this corridor - "Silk Road", "One Belt, One Road", and LapisLazuli - pass through Azerbaijan and it is not surprising that our country has become the key beneficiary of this year's increased cargo traffic. In particular, in January-October 2022 over 22.918 million tonnes of cargo, or 54% of the total volume of cargo transported via the TRACECA corridor, were delivered by road through the territory of Azerbaijan. At the same time, the growth rate for road transportation increased by 22.9% compared to last year's figures.

According to experts, the rate of road transport along the Middle Corridor will only grow in the coming years, which will also increase the load on domestic highways of international importance. Fortunately, Azerbaijan has consistently upgraded all necessary transit roads to Georgia, Russia, and Iran over the past two decades, with a view to future trade expansion along the West-East and North-South routes.

According to the State Roads Agency of Azerbaijan (SRAA), from 2003 to 2021 the country built, reconstructed, and repaired 19.2 thousand kilometres of roads of various categories. During the reporting period, 460 new bridges and road interchanges were also erected, automobile tunnels were laid, and about a hundred similar facilities were overhauled. Among them, the modernisation of the 508-kilometre Silk Road from Baku to the state border with Georgia was fully completed more than seven years ago, and in 2018 the four-lane Alat-Astara road at the state border with Iran, 204 kilometres long, was put into operation.

After some slowdown in road construction during the 2014-2017 global oil crisis, investments in road maintenance and development in Azerbaijan went up dynamically again in 2019-2020. Following the actual completion of basic trunk roads of international importance - westbound, northbound and southbound - the most important development trend in recent years has been the reconstruction of local roads, mainly in the regions. Due to additional state budget revenues and financing from the President's Reserve Fund, work has been completed on the completion of the segment of the East-West international corridor - the Ganja highway-Georgian border, the expansion of sections of the Astara highway-Iranian border, as well as highways in Aghsu, Tovuz, Geranboy, Shamkir districts, which will ensure convenient and safe movement of about 90 thousands of people living in 25 settlements. The construction of modern roads in the direction of Khinalig, Leze, etc. is planned for the next years in order to develop the mountain tourist centres, etc.

In 2021-2022, the vector of road construction activity shifted to the revival of transport communications in the Karabakh and East-Zangazur economic regions. Over the past two years, unprecedented road construction works have been carried out here in terms of the volume of capital investments and the scale of involvement of machinery and manpower. All in all, more than 700 kilometres of roads, bridges, tunnels, and other road infrastructure are being built on about a dozen or so sections of the liberated territories. To assess the magnitude of the work being carried out in the mountainous terrain, it is worth recalling that 33 tunnels are being built over 50 kilometres in length; 84 bridges over 12 kilometres long are also being built in the region. About half of the roads and engineering structures have already been built, while work on dozens of other sections is in full swing. Moreover, along with the Azerbaijani construction companies, Turkish contractors are actively involved in road projects, contributing to a high level of quality and safety and the use of modern construction technologies and know-how.

At the same time, a capital-intensive program of building highways and railway infrastructure - the foundation of the future Zangazur corridor - is being implemented in the East Zangazur Economic Region of Azerbaijan. In particular, the construction of the 124-kilometer-long Goradiz-Aghbend-Armenia border road is 70% complete, and its commissioning is scheduled for late 2023.

And it appears that road construction in the Karabakh region will remain a steady trend for SRAA's activities for at least the next five to seven years, also providing jobs for local road construction companies and international contractors.

Azerbaijan's achievements in road construction are commendable, but at the same time, it is difficult and costly to find the considerable budgetary resources required to build and maintain highways on an annual basis. As the international practice shows, today even the richest countries are not ready to shift the burden of road construction only onto the state shoulders; accordingly, for more than half a century the practice of putting into operation toll roads will help to take the financial burden off the government shoulders and provide the traffic with better services: average speed on the busy sections no lower than 90-110 km/h, a high number of traffic lanes and high quality of the roadbed is getting stronger. Toll roads also benefit from modern passive safety systems, such as guardrails with special panels to prevent blinding the oncoming driver, high-quality reflective markings, numerous petrol stations, shops and cafes, car parks, and rest areas along the road, etc.

The possibility of building and operating toll roads in Azerbaijan was actively discussed at the government level about nine years ago, and the relevant amendments to the Law on Roads were adopted in 2013. However, the implementation of the first project of this kind has only become possible in recent years. Thus, in 2022, work on the formation of the most important component of the North-South transport corridor - a new four-lane highway (M-1 highway) Baku-Guba-Russian border with a total length of 152 kilometres - was accelerated. "The asphalt work on most of the highway has already been completed and the remaining part will be completed in the near future. The rest of the work will be completed in the first half of 2023", the SRAA press service said in a statement published the day before.

Highway M-1 will be the first toll highway in the country, the cost of travel on the new route will be regulated by the Ministry of Economy and the Tariff Council, and the relevant price proposals have already been submitted to these structures. It is expected that all the money collected for the toll road will be used to maintain the highway in proper condition. Saleh Mammadov, chairman of the SRAA Board, said that four mechanisms for weighing trucks and lorries to control their workload and prevent the destruction of the road have been already installed on the M-1 highway.

According to the legislation in force in Azerbaijan, the opening of a toll road is permissible only if there is a free alternative along this route, which in this case is the existing Baku-Guba-Russian border road. The old road, upgraded in 2010, deteriorated in the following years due to the poor quality of the construction work and excessive load on the roadbed from overloaded trucks. Over the past two years, rehabilitation work has been carried out on a number of deformed sections, the bulk of which has been completed, the SRAA announced on December 23. In accordance with the "Building Codes and Regulations", a new asphalt concrete pavement of the required thickness was laid, and road signs, information boards, and signal poles were installed on the site ready for operation. At present, reconstruction works continue on the remaining small section of the road, which is planned to be fully completed in the coming days, and the reconstructed road will be ready for unimpeded and safe vehicular traffic approximately by the World Azerbaijanis Solidarity Day and the New Year.