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The Trans-Asian Railway (TAR) was initiated in the
1960s with the objective of providing a continuous 14,000-km rail link
between Singapore and Istanbul (Turkey), with possible onward connections
to Europe and Africa. The link offered the potential to greatly shorten
the distances and reduce transit times between countries and regions,
while being a catalyst for the notion of international transport as
a tool for trade expansion, economic growth and cultural exchanges.
The international events that punctuated the 1960s, 1970s and early
1980s influenced the momentum of the concept during these three decades.
However, with the political and economic changes that took place in
the region in the 1980s and early 1990s, the development of the TAR
concept was revived.
Given the extent of the territory covered, the differences in standards,
and differences in the levels of technical development between railways
in the region, ESCAP adopted a step-by-step approach to define the TAR
network. The network was initially divided into four major components
which were studied separately. These components are:
(i) a northern corridor connecting
the rail networks of China, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, the Russian Federation
and the Korean Peninsula;
ii) a southern corridor connecting
Thailand and the southern Chinese province of Yunnan with Turkey through
Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and the Islamic Republic of Iran
with Sri Lanka also part of the corridor;
(iii) a subregional network covering the ASEAN
and Indo-China subregions; and
(iv) a north-south corridor
linking Northern Europe to the Persian Gulf through the Russian Federation,
Central Asia and the Caucasus region.
The studies followed similar methodology and principles,
namely: to (i) identify the major links of international importance,
(ii) assess their conformity with a set of technical requirements (e.g.
loading gauges, axle-load, speed), and (iii) appraise the compatibility
of operational practices on both sides of different national borders
to evaluate the possibility of cross-border movements (e.g. couplers,
length of trains). In addition, the “software” aspects of
transport were reviewed with particular attention to tariff-related
issues and the institutional framework pertaining to the passage of
goods across borders. Finally, two crucial infrastructure-related elements
were also considered, namely: (i) the existence of break-of-gauge points
along specific linkages with an assessment of possible solutions to
overcome this apparent technical incompatibility, and (ii) the existence
of so-called ‘missing links’ making end-to-end movements
impossible on some of the linkages.
Opportunities and challenges
There is a growing acceptance that rail has an important
role to play in the national and international movements of goods and
people. A number of features speak in favour of a greater utilization
of rail transport in Asia. (i) Twelve of the 30 landlocked countries
of the world are located on the Asian continent with the nearest ports
often several thousands of kilometres away, (ii) the distances linking
the main origin and destination, both domestically and internationally,
are of a scale on which railways find their full economic justification,
(iii) the reliance on ports to connect national economies to the world’s
markets with the need to clear landside port areas quickly to avoid
congestion, especially in the context of growing containerization and
the development of intermodal transport, (iv) a number of countries
are major exporters of mineral resources in the logistic of which rail
transport plays a crucial role, (v) the continuing surge in the volumes
of goods being exchanged, and (vi) the recognition of rail as an environmentally
friendly and safe mode of transport.
The next challenge is to move towards joint operationalisation
of the corridors in a coordinated manner at financial, operational and
commercial levels. Institutional and technical bottlenecks have to be
identified and specific remedial measures have to be defined and implemented.
The development of common information technology systems has to be given
proper attention as well as the development of efficient access to ports
and inland container depots. In the longer term, corridor-based organizations
with the authority to act on behalf of their constitutive railway administrations
in areas such as service-definition, tariff-setting and marketing as
well as the possibility of bulk-selling trainload-based capacity to
private sector need to be considered. The development of joint border
stations to implement a “one-stop-shop” concept under which
all rail and non-rail operations by the relevant administrations of
two neighbouring countries are performed at one single location would
also be a step towards greater operational efficiency.
Facts and figures
To date TAR routes in operation cover a distance of almost 81,000 km
in 26 countries distributed as follows:
| South-East Asia: |
Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Viet
Nam |
12,600 km |
| North-East Asia: |
China, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Mongolia, Republic
of Korea, Russian Federation |
32,500 km |
| Central Asia and Caucasus: |
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan |
13,200 km |
| South Asia + Islamic Republic of Iran and Turkey: |
Bangladesh, India, Islamic Republic of Iran, Pakistan,
Sri Lanka, Turkey |
22,600 km |
| Total: |
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80,900 km |
Interested organizations, firms and individuals may get additional information
by writing to John Moon ( [email protected])
or Pierre Chartier ( [email protected]).
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