Tbilisi Railway station is the central railway station of Tbilisi with an adjacent shopping mall. The first central station in Tbilisi was built in 1872, with trains to the blacksea port of Poti. In the 1940s the building was demolished and replaced with a building in the style of the Stalinist architecture. In the early 1980s the building was demolished and replaced by a building in the style of the Brutalist architecture. The architects Bairamashvili, Kavlashvili, G. Shavdia and Jibladze won a State Prize for their work in 1992. In 2010 the station was rehabilitated and transformed into a combined railway station and shopping mall. The transformation was designed by Zwarts & Jansma architects. The station is served by two subway stations of Tbilisi Metro, Sadguris Moedani I and Sadguris Moedani II, which together form the only connection between the two lines of Tbilisi Metro. There are daily inbound and outbound trains connecting Tbilisi and Yerevan, departing from Tbilisi railway station. From neighboring Armenia, trains depart to Tbilisi and Batumi from Yerevan railway station.
Future
There is a project to replace the direct railway crossing Tbilisi by a bypass connection north of Tbilisi in the coming years. The Tbilisi central station would be closed but remain a shopping mall. It would not be served any longer by passenger trains, and the existing infrastructure would be dismantled. Instead of a central station the Didube station in the north and the Navtlugi station in the south-east of Tbilisi would become dead-end termini for passenger trains. Because of this a through connection for passenger trains and direct passenger transfers would no longer be possible. Instead of the expected reduction of environmental and traffic problems the axing would probably cause more traffic problems, because the public transport and underground transport system of the capital is optimized for the central station. Although argued otherwise by the Americanconsulting firmBooz Allen Hamilton, the project is therefore very much disputed by Western European transportation specialists and railway companies.
