Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili stated that the travel time from Tbilisi to Batumi would be just three hours until 2024 after the construction of 96 bridges and 53 tunnels on the Rikoti Pass.
Currently the trip takes around five-six hours.
Garibashvili noted that projects of such scale and complexity had not been implemented in the country.
“This is a truly outstanding project across Europe, costing more than 2 billion GEL and the project will be fully completed in 2024,” said Garibashvili.
He called the construction of a 388-kilometer highway connecting the Red Bridge (a crossing point between Georgia and Azerbaijan on the Tbilisi-Ganja road) and Sarpi (located in the south-west of Georgia on the border with Turkey) the “project of the century”, a part of which was the Rikoti Pass.
“This section is important because it is an integral part of the east-west highway, which starts from Brest (a city in the southwestern part of Belarus) and ends at the Chinese border,” Garibashvili stated.
Construction work is underway on the Ubisa-Shorapani section of the Rikoti Pass. (Agenda/Business World Magazine)
