13 January 2021

... Experts worry about the environmental damage of building a railway through fragile mountain regions. Kyrgyz Prime Minister’s advisor and economist Kubat Rahimov said that “any infrastructure project will need additional measures relating to explosive-technical and drilling operations requiring hundreds of thousands or even millions or cubic metres of rocks to be moved, as well as building tunnels, bridges, railway stations, loading and unloading stations, and all kinds of junctions, bypasses and additional tracks.”

The CKU railroad project is particularly difficult, said Kubat Rahimov, because it will require building tunnels through mountainous areas. Regardless of the route, the environmental consequences will be significant, as in certain areas it will be necessary to change the course of rivers and change drainage patterns, because we will need to build bridges with columns and engineering structures which will be directly on the water surface...