India gets on board the Trans-Asian Railway
By Raja M
Getting from Singapore to Scotland by train will soon be possible now that
India has hopped aboard the Trans-Asian Railway (TAR) project.
In a big boost to the 81,000-kilometer intercontinental rail link, India on
March 8 ratified an intergovernmental agreement on the railway network
connecting 32 Asian countries to Europe. With missing rail links to be built to
connect existing and upgraded rail networks, the entire TAR project is expected
to be complete by
2015.
As one of the most economically and culturally important transport links in
modern history, the TAR project will connect India with China in the east and
Europe in the west.
"The intergovernmental agreement will formalize the coordinated development of
Trans-Asian Railways," said Priya Ranjandas Dasmunsi, India's minister for
parliamentary affairs. "This will help the movement of rail traffic, and the
improvement of trade and tourism among Asian countries."
Eighteen countries, including Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Iran,
Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Nepal, South Korea, Russia, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan,
Thailand, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, have signed the agreement. The
Intergovernmental Agreement on the Trans-Asian Railway was signed last November
10 during the Ministerial Conference on Transport in Busan, South Korea,
bringing the operational reality of the TAR closer.
For its part in the TAR project, Indian Railways is expected to begin
constructing a 350km link between Jiribam in northeastern India to Moreh in
Myanmar, with that country's impoverished military regime sharing part of the
estimated US$678 million bill. India's North East Frontier (NEF) Railway is
likely to construct this link through some of the toughest terrain in South
Asia.
"No date has been fixed yet to start the work, as the Home and Defense
ministries have to work out the exact modalities," T K Rabha, a senior official
of NEF Railways, told Asia Times Online from the railway's headquarters in
Guwahati, capital of the northeastern state of Assam. "Awareness of the
Trans-Asian Railway is moderate in this region, and those who are aware of it
are excited about its enormous potential."
Besides boosting trade, the proposed India-Myanmar rail link could take
travelers nearer to famous South Asian World War II landmarks such as Stilwell
Road, named after US General Joseph Warren Stilwell (1883-1946), the commanding
general of the Allied armies of China, Burma and India, who built the 1,800km
road connecting northeastern India to China's Yunnan province through what is
now Myanmar, to enable his forces to enter China from India to counter the
Japanese.
Interestingly, a visiting Chinese trade delegation asked India to reopen the
spectacular Stilwell Road, called Tea Horse Road in China, to facilitate trade
between the two nations through the historic route. The proposed Trans-Asian
rail link through the region could do just that.
The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific
(UNESCAP) supports the TAR network, which was started in the 1960s to initially
provide a 14,000km unbroken rail line between Singapore and Istanbul that, when
complete, would become the world's longest train link, overtaking the 9,288km
Trans-Siberian rail journey from Moscow to Vladivostok, with 87 cities in
between.
The TAR is one of the "three pillars", as the UN calls it, of the Asian Land
Transport Infrastructure Development project, endorsed by the UNESCAP
Commission at its 48th session in 1992, along with the 141,000km Trans-Asian
Highway and facilitation of regional land transport projects.
The Trans-Asian Railway is expected to boost trade, providing much-needed
quicker, easier movement of freight. The impetus of Asian trade, growing at an
average of 13% annually, compared with 9% in the rest of the world, will
accelerate completion of the missing links. Besides, railways are being
increasingly accepted as a better freight-movement option than polluting road
transport, pirate-infested seas and inadequate port facilities.
UNESCAP says its longer-term hopes are of developing joint border stations,
with TAR-corridor-based organizations authorized to act on behalf of their
constitutive national railways to promote and facilitate trade among
neighboring countries. Long-term, the trans-Asian transportation projects could
sow the seeds of a much closer and much needed pan-Asian identity along the
lines of the European Union.
In the interim, building the missing links of the transportation networks will
also develop local regions. For instance, the new Indo-Myanmar link of the TAR
will bring trains running for the first time through more parts of India's
remote and economically backward northeastern region.
The TAR will connect Asian capital cities, link major industrial and
agricultural centers, connect air, sea and river ports and, above all, offer
significant tourism benefits.
The variety of train journeys that would be available are a traveler's dream.
One memorable ride could connect Bangkok to Moscow, via Laos and China.
This link will connect Singapore to the Chinese city of Kunming, running
through Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar. The 8,135km
line will use upgraded existing lines, as well as new rail lines built between
these nations, at an estimated cost of $2.5 billion.
Another trans-Asian rail journey could start from the Indonesian island of Java
or Sumatra, with a railway-ferry link to Singapore, then to Thailand, remote
regions of Myanmar, Bangladesh, across India's Gangetic Plains, to Pakistan,
Iran, Turkey and on to Europe via the Middle East.
With India now on board, China is already enthusiastically supporting the TAR.
China will help speed up construction of its section of the Kunming-Singapore
rail link, and will also work with Thailand and Cambodia to build the
Poipet-Sisophon line. According to Sokhom Pheakavanmony, director general of
Royal Railways of Cambodia, the rail link between Poipet and Sisophon will be
complete by the end of 2007 or early 2008.
With already established rail links between countries falling into disuse, such
as the one between Thailand and Cambodia, consistent link maintenance is one of
the challenges facing the TAR.
Other logistical challenges include differing railway gauges (Asian nations use
five different track gauges, meaning trains cannot automatically chug down the
whole route) and varying customs and security formalities.
Yet given the growing thrust of economic and tourism forces, we could soon have
a delicious Japanese lunch at Wasabi Bistro in the Oriental Hotel in Singapore,
then go to the railway station and take the train to the Royal Ettrick Hotel in
Edinburgh, Scotland.
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