Laos rethinks rail project
November 9, 2010 by Rapeepat Mantanarat
Filed under Mekong Region
BANGKOK, 9 November 2010 – The Lao government will cancel a joint venture project with Thailand to extend the Nong Khai rail track into the capital city Vientiane, Thai officials confirmed Monday.
Lao government officials reason the Thai-Lao rail extension will duplicate a high speed train project between China and Thailand that passes through Laos.
The high-speed train project will also involve the construction of a second bridge across the Mekong River at Nong Khai to support the Chinese-built trains.
At the close of the meeting with Lao officials, held at the Ministry of Transport, permanent secretary, Supoj Saplom, confirmed the Lao Ministry of Public Works and Transport had scraped the joint venture project, worth US$50 million. It involved extending the current rail track 9 km to a proposed station near to the capital. Today, the line ends at a small station in Laos about 4 km from the Mekong River. According to the Chinese-Thai plans, the high-speed train project will pass relatively close to the capital on the route Nong Khai to Kunming in Yunnan province, China.
Travellers can travel by train from Nong Khai station on the Thai side of the Mekong River across the Friendship Bridge to Tha Na Laeng, which is still 20 km short of Vientiane. The Thai government had agreed to finance an extension that would have ended the line at station in Khamsavat village, Xaysettha district, 4 km from the capital’s That Luang Temple.
Mr Supoj said Lao officials reviewed the project and decided to convert the Tha Na Laeng into a rail cargo terminal for goods trains that would continue to cross the Friendship Bridge. Cargo trains will cut the costs of transporting goods to the landlocked country from its main gateway port of Bangkok. The business is dominated by trucking companies and recent fuel hikes have raised cargo rates to Laos considerably.
As for the new bridge, to support high-speed trains, the two countries have yet to agree on financing and will need to establish a joint committee to work out details. Trains crossing the Friendship Bridge use a track embedded in the road. The bridge is closed to allow the daily train to cross. It is more a symbolic service representing the only train service in the country albeit on a short 4 km track.
During the same discussions, Thai and Lao officials discussed an international bus service from Thailand’s Nakhon Phnom province, where the third Mekong bridge is under construction and due to open next year. The river bridge is the missing link on a road that connects central Khammouane province in Laos with Vietnam’s northern coastal province of Quang Binh.
The high speed train project from Nong Khai to Bangkok will cover 615 km costing around Bt280 billion. From China, the train will depart from Kunming travelling south to Laos crossing the border near Boten and then passing through Vientiane province to the Mekong River and Nong Khai on the Thai side of the border. In Thailand new tracks capable of handling high-speed trans will have to be built adjacent to the current rail track from Nong Khai to Bangkok.
Another planned high speed train route, covering 1,000 km on a Bangkok-Padang Besar route will connect to Malaysia’s rail system and end at one of the world’s largest container ports in Singapore, second only to Shanghai in cargo volume.
The Chinese are also prepared to fund another rail track from Laos heading east to the Vietnamese border.
Laos should proceed to build the high speed railway from Boten to Vientiane to Nong Khai, in line with the rail development of the region. Whats to be undertaken with the cooperation of China, should be planned for the next 50 years and beyond; I certainly wish them well in their planned development of railway toward regional connectivity.
Tay
Laos presently pride itself as a “land-linked country as it is a country that has borders with Myanmar, Thailand,Cambodia,Vietnam and China.It has been fortunate to be assisted in its economic development by all these neighboring nations.
China grant aid to Laos in various forms are well-known by the people of Laos.China also is helping building entirely new city near our over-crowded Lao capital city of Vientiane to relocate.Vietnam and Thailand also assisted Laos in building a great number of bridges and hydro-electric dams in various parts of our mountainous country.
Cambodia also cooperates with Laos in various development projects of the Mekong River Commission. Consequently, If China and Laos, through friendly discussions and positive feasibility studies, judge that a railways from Kunming to Vientiane is worth building, then I personally believe that this is something the Lao side would consider with sympathy.
Laos is so far away from needing anything like a bullet train it boggles the imagnination that anything like it is being suggested. The issues that surround this “development” are far from minor as well. There have been well-sourced rumours that part of the price Laos has to pay for this “gift” is several kilometers of land, perhaps even 10 kilometers of land, to either side of the rail line for exclusive use and development by China/Chinese. This along with the usual hundreds or thousands of resident visas, either for construction or for “business development” (read lower-quality Chinese goods importers/retailers), means this is just colonialism by another name. Kit has it right, an express line would be more than adequate, and not nearly so expensive or demeaning for the Laos people.
Nah…we shouldn’t try to stand in the way of progress, especially if someone is willing to do the hard work. Sure, environmental destruction, the usage of 100% Chinese labor (no Lao persons will get a job during the construction phase) and some other issues are faced by this project, but who else would do it if it weren’t for the Chinese?
Forget the west, which have their own agendas and too much debt to even think about financing such a project. The USA bombed Laos in the 1960′s and 1970′s and have only given Laos a pitiful amount of aid for various development projects since then; sorry, but the $4.8 million or however much it was that the US gave to Laos last year is not going to provide any long term benefits to the Lao people. Think big projects like this one instead.
Anyway, now the Chinese will build a high-speed railway project that will be better than anything that currently exists in the USA. If Thailand can get over its political mangling, the whole region can soon be connected by high-speed rail. And apart from a few minor issues, why the hell not? Besides, this century will become China’s century…Asia’s century.
Great! And this China-Singapore high-speed line will open in…. 2030, possibly? It would take a decade for the SRT just to think about it.
And what does high-speed mean? Bullet train / TGV style? Ah, just what Laos needs. Ah, just what Isaan needs.
How about spending a lot less money on something much simpler: a decent 20th century-style express line? That would already be a quantum leap for the whole region.