UPDATED: PM Barzani lays foundation stone for ‘150 Meter Road’ highway around Erbil

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Prime Minister, Nechirvan Barzani, in a ceremony this Wednesday will lay the foundation stone for a major infrastructure project in the capital of the Kurdish semi-autonomous region.

With the completion of the 120 Meter Road highway project in Erbil expected by the end of 2018, the KRG is working on another highway to improve traffic flow around the capital. 

“This project is another part of the implementation of the Erbil Master Plan. It started with the 120 Meter Road, and now we will have 150 Meter Road,” Erbil Governor, Nawzad Hadi, said during the ceremony.

Hadi mentioned that 150 Meter Road would link many city complexes and districts around Erbil to the city’s center.

Nawroz Mawlud, the Kurdistan Region’s Minister of Municipality and Tourism, said the entire 150 Meter Road project will be completed in five steps.

During his speech, Prime Minister Barzani stressed that “the highway will improve traffic flow inside the capital, traffic between Erbil and other cities, and improve trade movements.”

Erbil’s road system operates in concentric circles, the smallest surrounding the ancient citadel at the heart of the city and expanding as one moves toward the outskirts of the capital. The ringed roads follow the same name format: 30 Meter Road, 40, 60, 100, all the way to 120 Meter Road, the latter officially opening in Feb. 2017.

With all the ever-larger circular roads extending further away from the city’s center, Erbil is sometimes referred to as the Spider City due to the way it looks from the sky.

150 Meter Road will reportedly be 70 kilometers-long, 42 kilometers longer than 120 Meter Road. The highway will be 40-meters wide.

The first stage of the project will focus on building 14 kilometers of road starting from the town of Bahirka to the Koya (Koy Sinjaq) road. The highway’s expected completion date is 2022, and a budget of 131 million dollars has been set aside for the first phase of the project.

The 150 Meter Road contract was awarded to Hemin Group, the same company that built 120 Meter Road.

The Kurdistan Region in the past few years has suffered through a financial crisis which was compounded by the emergence of the Islamic State (IS) in northern Iraq in 2014, cuts to the Kurdistan Region’s share of the national budget by the federal government of Iraq, and the influx of almost two million displaced people and refugees to the semi-autonomous region.

In mid-2018, the KRG started to allocate new budgets and resume projects which had been stalled or halted over the past few years.

Editing by Nadia Riva