Tbilisi–Batumi in four hours is in the rail plan, and 45 locomotives are out to tender
Georgia has launched a tender for 45 electric freight locomotives worth about 350 million dollars, part of a TC-GATE programme of more than 750 million dollars financed with 372 million from the World Bank and 181 million from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, approved in June 2026. The wider ten-year rail strategy is costed at 1.7 billion dollars. Among its stated aims is cutting the Tbilisi to Batumi journey from five and a half hours to four.
What is actually on order
Forty-five electric freight locomotives are at tender stage, at a reported cost of about 350 million dollars. Ten new electric passenger trains are earlier in the process, at market consultation, with a tender to follow under Asian Development Bank rules; five existing passenger trains are to be overhauled and modernised. No supplier has been named for any of it. National plans also cite 50 locomotives and 1,500 railcars, without a stated timetable, so the figures in circulation are not all describing the same procurement.
The routes it is meant to change
Four route commitments appear in the plan. A direct Tbilisi–Kutaisi service. The reopening of the Tbilisi–Akhaltsikhe line, suspended since 2009. A Tbilisi–Batumi journey cut from five and a half hours to four. And rehabilitation of the narrow-gauge Borjomi–Bakuriani line, the one that matters most to winter visitors. A new locomotive maintenance depot is planned at Khashuri, about 120 kilometres west of Tbilisi.
Why freight comes first
The largest single line in the programme is freight traction for the Georgian section of the Middle Corridor, the route moving cargo between China and Europe across the Caspian and the Caucasus. Freight is what repays the loans; passenger comfort is the by-product that arrives later. Anyone reading the four-hour Batumi figure as a near-term promise should note that it sits in a ten-year strategy with a 2026 to 2028 action plan, and that no delivery dates have been published for the trains that would make it possible.
What it would mean on the coast
Four hours is roughly the line between a trip you take for a week and a trip you take for a weekend. If the journey time falls that far, the people most affected are owners of small flats in Batumi and Gonio who currently rely on a summer season and a handful of long stays, and tour operators selling two-night coastal packages out of Tbilisi. Nothing changes until the trains arrive; but the plan is now financed, which is more than could be said of most previous versions of it.
Written by us from the source linked above, not investment, legal or tax advice. Figures and rules change — confirm anything that matters before acting on it.
