The Trans-Asian Railway (TAR) is a project to create an integrated freight railway network across Europe and Asia. The project is of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP).
The project was initiated in the 1950s, with the objective of providing a continuous rail link between Singapore and Istanbul, Turkey, with possible further connections to Europe and Africa. At the time shipping and air travel were not as well developed, and the project promised to significantly reduce shipping times and costs between Europe and Asia. Progress in developing the TAR was hindered by political and economic obstacles throughout the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. By the 1990s, the end of the Cold War and normalisation of relations between some countries improved the prospects for creating a rail network across the Asian continent.
The TAR was seen as a way to accommodate the huge increases in international trade between Eurasian nations and facilitate the increased movements of goods between countries. It was also seen as a way to improve the economies and accessibility of landlocked countries like Laos, Afghanistan, Mongolia, and the Central Asian republics.
Much of the railway network already exists as part of the Eurasian Land Bridge, although significant gaps remain. A big challenge is the differences in rail gauge across Eurasia. Four major rail gauges (which measures the distance between rails) are in use across the continent: most of Europe, as well as Turkey, Iran, China, and the Koreas use the gauge, known as Standard gauge; Russia and the former Soviet republics use a gauge; Finland uses a gauge, both known as Russian gauge; the railways in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka use the gauge, known as Indian gauge; and most of Southeast Asia has metre gauge. For the most part the TAR would not change national gauges; mechanized transfer facilities would be built to transload shipping containers from train to train at the breaks of gauge.
Routes
By 2001, four corridors had been studied:
The Northern Corridor will link Europe and Northeast Asia via Germany, Poland, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, North Korea and South Korea, with breaks of gauge at the Polish-Belarusian border ( to ), the Kazakhstan-Chinese border and the Mongolian-Chinese border (both to ). The Trans-Siberian Railway covers much of this route and currently carries large amounts of freight from East Asia to Moscow and on to the rest of Europe. Due to political problems with North Korea, freight from South Korea must currently be shipped by sea to the port of Vladivostok to access the route.
The Southern Corridor, also called ITI-DKD-Y (Istanbul-Tehran-Islamabad-Delhi-Kolkata-Dhaka-Yangon), 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 the Southeast Asian corridor, to Malaysia and Singapore. Gaps exist between Imphal-Moreh in India and to Tamu- Kalay (also called Kale and Kalemyo) in Myanmar, between Chittagong-Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh to Myanmar and between Myanmar and Thailand. The section in eastern Iran between Bam and Zahedan has been completed. Breaks of gauge occur, or will occur, at the Iran-Pakistan border ( to ), the India-Myanmar border ( to ), and to China ( to ).
A Southeast Asian network; this primarily consists of the Kunming–Singapore Railway.
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 rail ferry; and an eastern route through Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to eastern Iran. The routes converge in the Iran's capital of Tehran and continue to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.
Agreement
The Trans-Asian Railway Network Agreement is an agreement signed on 10 November 2006, by seventeen Asian nations as part of a United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) effort to build a transcontinental railway network between Europe and Pacific ports in China. The plan has sometimes been called the "Iron Silk Road" in reference to the historical Silk Road trade routes. UNESCAP's Transport & Tourism Division began work on the initiative in 1992 when it launched the Asian Land Transport Infrastructure Development project.
The agreement formally came into force on 11 June 2009.