YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 17, ARMENPRESS. The Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructures Gnel Sanosyan said the new Sisian-Kajaran road section will be “a well-maintained, safe road in line with modern standards.”

Sanosyan said it is a massive project with rather encompassing infrastructures.

“The total length of the North-South road is approximately 560 kilometers, and this 60 kilometers are one of the key sections. Now we have an average of 50 km/h speed on the current road from Sisian to Kajaran. We will have 100 km/h speed with this new road, and the travel time will be reduced by two hours. It will be a well-maintained safe road in line with modern standards, which is very important from a strategic point of view,” Sanosyan said.

He added that the road is an entirely new road with 27 bridges. The total length of the bridges are 4,7 kilometers. There are tunnel sections with a total length of more than 12 kilometers. There will be 5 tunnels in total, with one of them being 8,6 kilometers in length.

“We will do everything so that major international companies have serious interest in this project. We will have a contractor by yearend if no obstacles happen,” he said.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said at the Cabinet meeting that the pre-qualification tender for the Sisian-Kajaran section of the North-South road was announced on February 17.

Pashinyan said that this project is of great strategic importance. The project is worth a few hundred million dollars.

“Essentially, an investment project of this size has never been implemented in the history of independent Armenia,” Pashinyan said.

“I want to say that as a result of the latest discussions we have re-formulated the North-South project and made it a “North-South, East-West” project. We hope to implement this project with fast pace. This means that one of the branches of this road will connect Armenia with Iran, the other branch will connect Armenia with Azerbaijan, then in the future towards Nakhijevan and Turkey. We place this project in the general context. We hope we’ll have a construction company by yearend who will implement the work. Of course the east-west section of the road project isn’t done but we will realize this in the context of reaching future agreements,” Pashinyan said.

The pre-qualification phase will last 70 days.

Pashinyan added that concrete works are now underway for the construction of the Yeraskh-Julfa-Ordubad-Meghri-Horadiz railway. He expressed hope that the agreements that have been reached will soon be recorded in the form of any document, and the process would take full-swing implementation already de jure.