Bangkok (United Nations Information Services) -- Asia-Europe land bridges, particularly along the northern corridor of the Trans-Asia Railway, have the potential to be competitive against related sea routes, the head of the UN's regional office in Bangkok said yesterday. He was speaking at the opening of a four-day meeting on the development of rail container transport from Asia to Europe along the northern corridor of the Trans-Asian Railway.
Mr. Adrianus Mooy, Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) said he hoped that the meeting would result in actions towards demonstration runs of container trains along the Trans-Asian Railway-Northern Corridor and eventually in full operation of all routes along the entire network.
ESCAP, in co-operation with the Organization for Railways Cooperation, has been implementing Phase I of a demonstration project on Asia-Europe Container Transport since February 1998. The rail networks involved include China, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, the Russian Federation and the Korean Peninsula, as well as Belarus, Germany and Poland.
"Based on the principle that Asia-Europe land-bridges have the potential to be competitive against related sea routes, the purpose of the project is to assist the participating countries to determine tasks that need to be implemented in order to develop services attractive to shippers," Mr. Mooy said.
"This involves determining the required package of transit times, tariffs and level of services that the railways along the Northern Corridor of the Trans-Asian Railway need to offer if they are to compete against well-established shipping lines."
The Policy-level Expert Group Meeting on the Development of Asia-Europe Rail Container Transport through Block-Trains on the Northern Corridor of the Trans-Asian Railway is being held at the United Nations Conference Centre in Bangkok from 1-4 February 2000.
The meeting is considering the results of a demonstration project that follows on a feasibility study completed in 1995. This study identified the Trans-Asian Railway northern routes with onward connections to Western Europe and determined that even super high-cube containers could be transported along these routes.
Attending the meeting are representatives of Belarus, China, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Germany, Japan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Republic of Korea, Poland and the Russian Federation, as well as representatives of the Organization for Railways Cooperation and the International Union of Railways.