Improving Transnational Transport Corridors
In the OIC Member Countries: Concepts and Cases
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It is often the same as in western countries, but supply chain management and logistics are
increasingly popular university subjects at bachelor and masters levels and the forwarders and
shipping lines hire the students rather than experienced practitioners.
This is also the case in Azerbaijan, where the ADA University has much influence in the region.
It started as a diplomat academy, but has developed into a general university with a business
school, a faculty of Information technology and engineering and a faculty of Education added to
the faculty of Public and international affairs. An example is that an alumni was appointed to
become director of the new port of Alat south of Baku (Ismailzade, 2017). The interest in
developing further education in supply chain management, logistics and freight transport
indicates a great interest in TRACECA and there are tight personal connections between the
secretariat and the university (Ciopraga (2017) and Ismailzade (2017)) and even with the
diplomatic sector (Danestad, 2017). To further develop, much focus is laid on international
collaboration (Danestad (2017) and Ismailzade (2017)) and ADA University has exchange
agreements with many European universities, like Maastricht University. ADA University seeks
to develop more cooperation particularly in the field of transport, logistics and supply chain
management.
Anyway, excessive academic education is of less added value when operating the vessels and
vehicles, but certainly needed for developing the networks and more complicated services. It
seems that a similar development of logistics education is needed in the TRACECA countries
and the ADA program in Supply Chain Management is a good start.
Another social factor is the labor mobility. In a transport corridor setting, the ability of drivers
to operate along the corridor is a first step. CIS is a visa free area, but work permits are
required for drivers. Acceptance of international driver’s licenses is not a major problem along
TRACECA. Ismayil (2017) states, however, that an Afghan driver and vehicle might be more
likely to be checked at borders than an EU colleague but <1% of vehicles are checked at the
borders. Driver’s license and permits are shown but not always scrutinized.
4.3.6. Safety, security and the legal liability
According to Ismayil (2017), TRACECA can offer better transport safety and reliability than the
routes through Russia. To maintain this as a selling point, TRACECA must work hard and
continuously to keep the advantage.
The work on road traffic safety from EU-funded TAPs, like the Land Transport Safety and
Security project (TRACECA Secretariat, 2011) and the TRACECA – Road Safety II project
(SAFEGE, 2016) continues. The project aimed at improving transport safety and security in
line with European standards in the field of land transport. Although security is mentioned and
the scope is land transport, there is a very strong focus on the subset of road safety. Very little
is written on security. It was also limited to the TRACECA countries east of Turkey. TRACECA
aims for the Swedish level of traffic safety, the “zero vision” is a benchmark, but it is 10-15
years into the future since the infrastructure and vehicles are not there yet (Ismayil, 2017).