The recast of the TER Master Plan (UNECE) intends to approach the railway transport from a national perspective to the regional one and furthermore, to an intercontinental perspective. One of the most important goals of the document recast refers to the amendment and update of transport networks and of the railway connections between the involved countries.
The TER network has been extended, including Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Montenegro, states which did not take part in the initial Master Plan. Likewise, an important point of the document consists in the identification of lacking connections in the Eurasian area. Moreover, some of the participating states have suggested additional connections contributing to the network interconnection. Special attention is paid to the development and modernisation of the railway infrastructure for the period 2015-2020.
Railway infrastructure development must ensure direct traffic from Europe to Asia (and vice versa). Pan-European Corridor IV is one of the routes ensuring direct connection on this axis. The connection ensured in the Asian part is lacking a 101 km-long connection, which will nevertheless be built, especially to ensure traffic in the Eurasian area. Thus, the construction of the line Kars (Turkey) – Akhalkalaki (Georgia), the implementation of the project on the North-South corridor, the construction of the line Astara (Azerbaijan) – Rasht (Iran), the modernisation of the section Baku – Boyuk – Kesik (Azerbaijan-border with Georgia) and the construction of Alyat port (Azerbaijan) are the projects which will contribute to the significant increase of the competitiveness of Trans-European and Trans-Asian networks, at the same time ensuring rapid connections in the freight railway traffic between Europe and Asia.
“Central Asia wants to have a performing freight transport. There are ferryboat and railway routes which have an increased potential in ensuring freight traffic. To this effect, Asia massively invests in infrastructure projects. Thus, Turkey relies more and more on railway traffic, and Azerbaijan is one of the countries investing enormously in railway projects, a recent project being the relocation of Baku port, which raises great challenges, but which will significantly contribute to the economic development of the country and of the region. If we do not do anything for railway transport, there are many road projects which will absorb financing and railway transport will lose its importance”, declared Helmut Meelich, Project Manager within UNECE.
At the same time Europe also focuses on railway infrastructure projects, EC recently presenting the investment financing plan amounting to EUR 50 Billion on the improvement of transport, energy and digital networks in Europe. Within the Connecting Europe Facility, EUR 31.7 Billion will be invested in the modernisation of transport infrastructure, construction of inexistent connections and elimination of road bottlenecks. This investment includes EUR 10 Billion from the Cohesion Fund, dedicated to transport projects in cohesion countries, the remaining EUR 21.7 Billion being made available to all member states for transport infrastructure investments.
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