TRANSPORTATION
Roads:
The Asian Highway (AH) project, also known as the Great Asian Highway, is a cooperative project among countries in Asia and Europe and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), to improve the highway systems in Asia. It is one of the three pillars of Asian Land Transport Infrastructure Development (ALTID) project, endorsed by the ESCAP commission at its forty-eighth session in 1992, comprising Asian Highway, Trans-Asian Railway (TAR) and facilitation of land transport projects.
By mid-2008 the North-South Corridor segment of the Asian Highway, AH-3, was nearly fully paved, with only a few kilometers incomplete. The North-South Corridor Project of has been part of the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) agenda since 1993 and aimed to improved the connected economies of China, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia.
The Thai cabinet approved the project in February 2007 with an expected completion date in 2011, but many remain skeptical that the schedule will be met since successive Thai governments since the late 1980s have similarly promised to undertake the project.
Railroads:
The Trans-Asian Railway (TAR) is a project to create an integrated freight railway network across Europe and Asia. The TAR is a project of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP).
The Trans-Asian Railway system will consist of four main railway routes. The existing Trans-Siberian railway, which connects Moscow to Vladivostok, will be used for a portion of the network in Russia. Another corridor to be included will connect China to Korea, Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan.
By 2001, the four corridors had been studied as part of the plan:
- The Northern Corridor will link Europe and the Pacific, via Germany, Poland, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, and the Koreas, with breaks of gauge at the Polish-Belarusian border (1435 mm to 1520 mm), the Kazakhstan-Chinese border (1520 mm to 1435 mm), and the Mongolian-Chinese border.
- The Southern Corridor will go from Europe to Southeast Asia, connecting Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Thailand, with links to China's Yunnan Province and, via Malaysia, to Singapore.
- A Southeast Asian network
- The North-South Corridor will link Northern Europe to the Persian Gulf. The main route starts in Helsinki, Finland, and continues through Russia to the Caspian Sea, where it splits into three routes: a western route through Azerbaijan, Armenia, and western Iran; a central route across the Caspian Sea to Iran via ferry; and an eastern route through Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to eastern Iran.
Water transport:
Water transport is an integral component of the overall transport system of the region. It plays an important role in providing effective services for the movement of cargo and passengers on rivers, lakes and canals of the Asian region. The region has at least 280,000 kilometers of navigable waterways and more than 340,000 large vessels and millions of country boats operate on those waterways, carrying more than 1 billion tons of cargo and half a billion passengers each year. In some countries, inland vessels carry more than 30 per cent of total freight traffic. In many riparian areas the percentage reaches up to 50 per cent.
Even so, the Asian region has further tremendous capacity reserve potential for further development of water transport. In view of the importance of water transport in the region, the Commission adopted Resolution 55/1 on Sustainable Development of Inland Water Transport in the Asia and Pacific Region in April 1999.
With joint national and international efforts in the region, water transport will gradually be integrated within overall transport networks and inter modal transport systems in particular.