Bangabandhu Railway Bridge

Bangabandhu Railway Bridge is an under-construction railway bridge on Jamuna River. This bridge connects Sirajganj with Tangail by railway network. After construction this bridge will be the longest solo railway bridge in Bangladesh. As of October 2020, 44 trains per day pass through the existing Bangabandhu Bridge. As the bridge does not allow trains to run at full speed and being a single-track railway takes longer to cross the bridge, trains are prone to schedule disruptions. Also, heavy goods trains cannot run on the bridge due to weight restrictions. At the Bangabandhu Railway Bridge, the average time to reach the destination of the trains running between the capital Dhaka and the northern and western regions of the country will be reduced by 2 hours. Besides, the facility of transporting goods by rail from neighboring countries will increase. Apart from this, this bridge will also be useful for easy transportation of passengers and goods on internal routes. Apart from this, the bridge is an important link between SAARC, BIMSTEC, SASEC, and other regional and sub-regional railway routes and trans-Asian railway network. When the bridge is built, the railway tracks of the Bangabandhu Bridge will be removed.

Project details
First, on December 6, 2016, the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) approved the construction project of the bridge. For this, the Bangladesh government undertook the project at a cost of Tk 9,734 crore, of which Japan's development cooperation organization Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) will provide Tk 7,724 crore. The project is scheduled to be implemented by December 2023.

However, in the next revised project, the deadline has been extended by two years to December 2025. At the same time, the project cost has been increased from Tk 9,734 crore to Tk 16,781 crore. JICA will provide loan assistance of 72% of the construction cost. Bangladesh Railway will implement the project.