ASIAN HIGHWAY NETWORK GATHERS SPEED

By Raja M

June 21, 2006

MUMBAI - More pieces of the ambitious 141,204-kilometer Asian Highway network slotted into place this month as Vietnam completed its section linking Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar. Do Ngoc Dung, vice director general of the My Thuan Project Management Unit (PMU), announced completion of the work. The US$144.77 million construction bill was partly financed by the Asian Development Bank.

The $44 billion Asian Highway network weaves through 32 countries, connects Asia with Europe, and promises to boost regional economies by facilitating trade and tourism through its linkage of Asian seaports, airports and major tourist destinations. It also fleshes out dreams of a Pan-Asian community with a common socio-political-economic identity analogous to the European Union.

"There is a 12-20% [increase in the growth of gross domestic product associated with greater investment in highways in India," said A Veeraragavan, a professor with the leading Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and one of the country's top experts in highway engineering. "The GDP growth rate may vary from Asian country to country, but the bottom line is [there are] more advantages with better highways, from saving lives lost in traffic accidents to economic benefits."

The Asian Highway is becoming the latest element of a growing highway economy worldwide, in which highways are increasingly operated as for-profit assets.

"In the US, foreign investors are increasingly interested in taking over the existing [3,200km of] toll roads," reports the UK-based World Highways magazine in its June issue. Debate was aroused over privatizing highways when the Spanish-Australian consortium Macquarie Infrastructure-Cintra struck a $1.8 billion, 99-year leasing deal for the Chicago Skyway, and then a $3.85 billion contract for the 252km Indiana Toll Road.

Privatization is more common in Western European toll roads - examples can be found in Italy, France and other countries - and Asia is not too far away, with countries such as China and India working on public-private partnerships to develop road infrastructure. According to a US Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) study, project costs average $675 million in Asia and the Far East compared with $690 million in Europe. India is expected to need $50 billion to $60 billion of public and private investment over the next five years for road infrastructure.

Conceived in 1959, the Asian Highway took off with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) promoting it more ardently in the past two decades. A big breakthrough came in April 2004 when 23 Asian countries signed the Asian Highway agreement in the 60th session of UNESCAP at Shanghai.

The agreement, active since last July 4, finalized the route map across Asia and established basic technical standards for roads and route signs along the Highway, such as using the initials "AH" suffixed with number codes for regions and sub-regions. So the single-digit route numbers 1 to 9 are for Asian Highway routes that substantially cross more than one sub-region. The route numbers 40-59 and 400-599 are for South Asian countries, while the route numbers 10-29 and 100-299 are reserved for Southeast Asia.

Tourism-driven economies such as that of Thailand are expected to benefit hugely from this 21st-century Silk Route through Asia. A total of 5,111km of the AH network runs through Thailand. China accounts for 25,579km of the planned route, while India - with the world's second-longest road network (3.3 million kilometers) after the US - has 11,432km of its total 65,570km of highway designated part of the AH.

Controversial environmental issues in highway development are being balanced with economic benefits. Growing economies need better road connectivity, with highway bottlenecks even in a developed economy such as the US costing that country $7.8 billion annually.

An FHWA research study showed the difference opening a single bridge can make: "In the two-year period during which the a new bridge [in Laredo, Texas] was opened for traffic, over 4,000 new jobs were added to an area with above the national average in employment," said the study. "The job gains were enough to send the Laredo employment rate up at the same time the employment rate was declining in Texas and the US as a whole."

Despite occasional political speed bumps (such as Bangladesh opting out of the Asian Highway, because of fears of giving India connectivity through its territory), the AH has a 2010 deadline. Though the project has yet to be promoted substantially among the Asian public, project officials say international traffic has, in fact, increased along the AH routes.

The highway has pushed regional governments to invest in infrastructure, such as in April 2002 when India, Myanmar and Thailand agreed to develop a linking road network. In 2005, the National Highways Authority of India launched the $12.54 billion Phase 3 of the National Highways Development Project, which aims to upgrade 10,000km of the country's busiest highways to four-lane status.

The Asian Highway is also sustaining focus on more critical issues. Last month, UNESCAP called a meeting in Bangkok on financing highway infrastructure and improving road safety. According to the UN body, by 2020 about two-thirds of the world's road-accident deaths (or 610,000 per annum) might be in the Asia-Pacific region. This implies 440,000 deaths and more than 2 million injuries incurred in road accidents in the region, registering economic costs of 1-3% of the GDP of UNESCAP countries, in addition to the pain and suffering of the individuals involved.

"Over 100,000 people die of road accidents in India [annually]," Veeraragavan said, adding that more than 3,000 "die daily in road accidents worldwide". He dismisses ecological concerns over developing highways, saying trees can be planted in other places than by roadsides, "which only cause more accidents. In Emperor Ashoka's time people had to walk to travel across the country and so shade-giving trees by roads [were] useful. Now even tribals use transport." (Ashoka the Great was emperor of the Maurya Empire, which extended over most of South Asia from 273-232 BC.)

A total of $26 billion has already been invested in the Asian Highway and $18 billion more is needed, says UNESCAP. Eighty-three percent of the network is considered ready, but more issues need to be addressed, such as traffic-friendly customs procedures across borders, and the degree of freedom that foreign vehicles driving through Asia have to move about within individual countries.

Part of the transportation "triad" launched by the Asian Land Transport Infrastructure Development project - along with the Trans-Asian Railway and various forms of land-transport facilitation, such as intermodal hubs - the young Asian Highway system has the potential to have a socio-economic significance in this century that equals or surpasses what the historic Silk Route had in ancient times.