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2008-0406 - AP - Isolated Laos plans to build railroad to the world

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.laos06apr06,0,5404999.story

baltimoresun.com

Isolated Laos plans to build railroad to the world

Associated Press

April 6, 2008

THANALAENG, Laos

Landlocked, impoverished Laos will soon take a significant step some countries first made two centuries ago - it will chug into the railway age with a humble, 2.17-mile line, but one linking it to a network projected to span all of Asia.

Workers are putting the finishing touches to a station, embankments and a 1-meter gauge track from the Thailand-Laos Friendship Bridge across the mighty Mekong River toward the country's capital of Vientiane. The line is expected to begin service in late April.

Enthusiastic officials view bringing rail to the mountainous, sparsely populated country as a spur to trade and tourism, helping pull it up from the ranks of the world's poorest nations. Although the initial track is short, it will connect the country to the seaports in neighboring Thailand and then elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

Rail shipping would cost only one-fourth of truck transport and slash prices of imported goods, said Sonesack N. Nhansana, deputy director general of the Lao Railway Authority. Further savings, he says, will come when Laos erects a facility to accept containers directly from seaports in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

"Three kilometers doesn't sound like much, but as the Chinese say, 'A long march starts with a single step.' It's crucial for facilitating trade," says Pierre Chatrier, a United Nations expert on Asian railways.

When the workers are done with the initial section, there are plans for expansion. The most ambitious is a railway straight down the country's spine to be part of the much-heralded link between Singapore and Kunming in southern China's Yunnan province. Someday, it is hoped, rail buffs will be able to hop aboard a train in the island republic and ride all the way to London - a 10,500-mile journey, the world's longest.

As the first step toward expansion, the French government is financing a feasibility study to add 5.6 miles of track to bring the line to the gates of Vientiane, the capital. Longer range, a link between the coast of central Vietnam and Laos is planned, as more spur lines are built and gaps are filled in the Trans-Asian Railway, a U.N.-backed network connecting Southeast Asia to the north and the entire continent to Europe.

Laos is one of the world's last communist-ruled countries. Laos opened up its once hermit economy in 1986, a decade after Pathet Lao guerrillas toppled the U.S.-backed government just as the Vietnam War ended. Today, it's actively seeking foreign investment.

Sonesack said many Chinese companies have expressed interest in the north-south project but that the Beijing government's financial backing was essential. Laos can't afford the estimated $1.7 billion price tag.

China may well foot the bill because Laos stands at the center of its economic push southward. Road and rail distances from Yunnan, a relatively poor region that Beijing seeks to develop, are far shorter through Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam than existing routes to China's eastern seaports.

Laos is one of the last nations in the world without rail service. Among those without are Greenland, Iceland, Cyprus, and several African, Caribbean and Persian Gulf nations. In Asia, the kingdom of Bhutan is the only other country that has no railroads.

"Many people said, 'You're a dreamer. It's impossible to construct a railway in Laos," said Sonesack, who studied engineering in the former Soviet Union. "I thought I would not see it in my own lifetime, maybe in my son's. Now it is reality."

He said future railway workers were being sent for training in Thailand, which covered the $6.2 million cost of the short line through loans and grants. Thai rolling stock will be used, but Sonesack said a Japanese manufacturer is expected to donate at least one locomotive and two rail cars.

Orient Express Hotels, a global travel company, is eager to carry tourists into Laos on its deluxe Eastern & Oriental Express. "As soon as the railway line is open and the Lao station is ready to accept passengers, we will be ready," said General Manager Leesa Lovelace.

Another tourism proposal is the possible restoration of what was actually Laos' first flirtation with railways - a 4-mile track built by French colonials.

The narrow gauge line, abandoned during World War II, was laid across two islands in southern Laos to bypass massive waterfalls that hindered cargo shipment up the Mekong from Vietnam. A Korean company has surveyed the area but the project has so far gone no further.

Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun


______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
2617 Humanities Building
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
951-827-4530
justinm at ucr.edu