Asian rail transportation system on right track within a decade<\/p>\n
Anthony Paul, The Straits Times, Asia News Network, Singapore<\/p>\n
Slowly but surely, a revolution in transcontinental rail
\ntransportation is changing the face of the Asia-Pacific region.
\nThe revolution's battle plans extend as far west as London, as
\nfar south as Australia. Singapore will be among the biggest
\nbeneficiaries.<\/p>\n
First, an update on what will become in about a decade
\nSingapore's first taste of the revolution's dividends -- the much
\nawaited Singapore-Kunming Railway Link.<\/p>\n
At a meeting with United Nations experts in Manila last week,
\nthe Asian Development Bank indicated that it was prepared to help
\nwith the financing needed to link the Thai and Cambodian rail
\nsystems via Aranyaprathet. This amount would reconstruct 55
\nkilometers of the Aranyaprathet-Sisophon track. \"Completion
\nshould make a Singapore-Phnom Penh journey possible about four
\nyears from now,\" Barry Cable, a Bangkok-based UN rail transport
\nexpert, told me.<\/p>\n
The one remaining link between Singapore and Kunming in Yunnan
\nprovince would then be the 403 kilometers between Bat Deng, near
\nPhnom Penh, and Ho Chi Minh City via Loc Ninh on the Vietnam
\nborder.<\/p>\n
Completion of the Thailand-Cambodia link and resulting
\nbenefits should generate momentum for the drive to fill the Phnom
\nPenh-Ho Chi Minh City gap. Preliminary talks among UN officials,
\nthe ADB and regional governments have already addressed co-
\nfinancing requirements for this final Singapore-Kunming section,
\nwhich would have to be built from scratch.<\/p>\n
About 10 years from now, it should be possible to embark on
\nwhat would surely be the world's greatest rail adventure -- from
\nSingapore across the entire Eurasian land mass.<\/p>\n
If you wanted to confine your travels to the region, you'd
\ntravel via Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam for the 5,513
\nkilometers to Kunming. By then, spurs from Kunming into Myanmar
\nand Laos may also have been built.<\/p>\n
But no need to remain in the region. A Singapore-London ticket
\nshould be possible. Change to a Beijing train at Dong Dang on the
\nChina-Vietnam border. Then board the Trans-Siberian Railway in
\nBeijing for the crossing to Moscow, followed by a Eurail journey
\nthrough the Channel Tunnel to Victoria Station.<\/p>\n
A century ago, East Asia had many unresolved doubts about
\nrailways. Complaining that train tracks sliced through buried
\nancestors, China's antiforeign Boxer rebels were burning down
\nrailroad stations. No such scene greets this new century. From
\nSeoul to Singapore and Sydney, Taipei to Tibet, new rail networks
\nabound.<\/p>\n
China tops the list. In January, the world's first commercial
\nmagnetically levitated, ultra high-speed train began operating in
\nShanghai. Other notable Chinese railway projects over the next
\nfew years will include a high-speed Beijing-Shanghai link -- to
\nbe built for Shanghai's 2010 World Expo -- and the opening of the
\nfirst \"Roof-of-the-World\" railway (from Xining in Qinghai
\nprovince, to Lhasa, Tibet's capital).<\/p>\n
Japan, France and Germany are contenders to build the $15
\nbillion Beijing-Shanghai service, which will cut travel time for
\nthe 1,400 kilometers between China's two major cities from 12
\nhours to five. Construction of the 1,956-kilometer Qinghai-Tibet
\nrailway, a stupendous confrontation with terrain and altitude,
\nbegan in 2001; completion is expected in 2007.<\/p>\n
China's other railway plans stagger the imagination (and
\npossibly future budgets): Mass-transit rail in 15 major cities; a
\n2,196-kilometer railroad across six east coast provinces; and a
\n3,100-kilometer rail link -- agreed to by Kazakhstan last month
\n-- that will follow the ancient Silk Route linking China to
\nEurope.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a new railway is reminding Australians that Darwin,
\ntheir northernmost city, is as much Singapore's neighbor as it is
\nSydney's. (Sydney is only 103 kilometers closer.) Australia's
\nlast great rail link -- a 1,420-kilometer span built between
\nAlice Springs and Darwin -- carried the first train in February
\non the first north-south continental rail crossing, Adelaide-
\nDarwin. As part of the new rail-freight service, a 6,025-ton,
\ntwin-deck container vessel, Northern Territory Express, now links
\nDarwin to Singapore in a seven-day voyage via Timor Leste.<\/p>\n
The main reason for this region-wide transportation upsurge?
\nGrowth -- in both population and private affluence. Asians are
\nfast becoming the world's most prolific exporters, and they now
\nhave the time and money for vacations away from home: China's
\ndomestic tourism authorities report double-digit growth for the
\npast 16 years. Some 90 percent of Chinese (that's 1.17 billion
\ntravelers) now take at least one in-country trip yearly.<\/p>\n
China sources also report another, more ominous reason for the
\nleadership's focus on labor-intensive construction. Cheaper and
\nbetter agricultural products that are expected to flood into
\nChina from abroad, now that the country has entered the World
\nTrade Organization, may cut the need for domestic farm
\nproduction. As a Shanghai-based Australian diplomat told me:
\n\"Railroad construction would be one good way to keep young men
\nbusy -- and outside most cities.\"<\/p>\n
Rail continues to make headlines elsewhere. At the beginning
\nof the month, Seoul launched its first high-speed train service,
\nthe Korea Train Express, joining Seoul and Busan, the second city
\n-- 410 kilometers in two-and-a-half hours. And in Taiwan from
\nOctober of next year, a high-speed, trans-island railway will
\nlink Taipei with Kaohsiung in one-and-a-half hours.<\/p>\n
But no country's rail building is likely to compare with
\nmainland China's. Since 1902, war and civil tumult have retarded
\nChinese rail development. During Mao Zedong's disastrous 1958-
\n1960 Great Leap Forward, communes tore up rails and melted them
\nin backyard furnaces in a desperate effort to meet steel-
\nproduction quotas.<\/p>\n
A simple statistic dramatizes the disordered century's result:
\nThere are 113 centimeters of track today for each American, whose
\ncountry is roughly the same size as China. There are just 5.5
\ncentimeters for each Chinese.<\/p>\n
Well into this century and possibly the next, building those
\nmissing 107.5 centimeters should add up to a lot of business.<\/p>",
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