Vast UN-backed Asian Highway moves ahead to link St. Petersburg
to Singapore
15 December 2005 Major upgrading projects and funding needs were
identified today for the United Nations-backed 140,000-kilometre
Asian Highway Network that will link the vast region from St.
Petersburg to Singapore and Seoul to Istanbul, facilitating trade
and tourism and opening up landlocked countries.
Transport officials from 32 countries met in Bangkok at the first
session of the Working Group on the Asian Highway following the
entry into force of the Intergovernmental Agreement on the project
in July.
Around $25 billion of investment is already committed, but an
estimated $18 billion is still needed to improve the routes About
22,000 kilometres or 15.7 per cent of the network does not meet the
minimum desirable standards set up by the Agreement.
The participants reviewed the current status of the network and
deliberated on promoting investment, updating the database and
improving road safety.
The Agreement, the first treaty developed under the auspices of UN
Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP),
requires its parties to make every possible effort to comply with
the minimum desirable standards both in constructing new routes and
in upgrading and modernizing existing ones.
In a complementary move last month, ESCAP members laid the
groundwork for the Trans-Asian Railway (TAR), a potential network
of over 80,000 kilometres of rail routes linking 27 Member
States.
