Improving Transnational Transport Corridors
In the OIC Member Countries: Concepts and Cases
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through Turkey to the Mediterranean coast, while refined oil products are more frequently
moved by train from Baku.
In Kazakhstan, the new port in Kurin (50 km from Aktau) invests in new piers to take two
ferries at once. There is a problem with draught, however, limiting ships to 5,3 m. Nominally it
is 6,5 m but the fairway is silted and not dredged often enough. The Black Sea has no draught
problems except for a channel in Ukraine, but it is no major problem according to Mamedov
(2017).
4.3.8. Environmental and Energy Factors
Environmental issues seem not to be very focused in TRACECA so far, but the replacement of
the port downtown Baku to Alat is partly motivated by reducing air pollution in Baku. For road
transport, EURO 3 engines are allowed along TRACECA including Turkey as long as
international standards are followed, but the trucks might not be allowed into Romania and
Bulgaria in the EU. Azerbaijan has EURO 4 requirements, but these are not strictly enforced.
The core of TRACECA is in a region, in which the energy sector has had strong influence for
well over 100 years. Much crude oil and oil products are also transported in trains along
TRACECA. Nevertheless, the EU chose to foster the development, expansion and modernization
of the energy corridor between Europe and the Caucasus as well as between participant states
in the separate INOGATE 35 initiative launched in Corridor Performance Monitoring in 1993
(Dekanozishvili, 2004).
4.3.9. Corridor Performance Monitoring
EU funded the French company Visiom to develop a database system for TRACECA for
capturing detailed transport data, but it required some 1M€ per year to maintain and run it
and it has not been operational for 10-15 years. Trade between different TRACECA countries
are nowadays reported by the member states, sometimes in tons sometimes in money terms,
and the TRACECA Secretariat compiles the statistics. It is particularly difficult to capture data
on how long distances the freight follows the corridor, which implies that there are no current
and longitudinal data on tonkms. The secretariat’s view is that very little follows TRACECA all
the way, but some trains might do so.
A more recent TAP, Transport Dialogue and Networks Interoperability II (IDEA II, see Maffii
and Martino (2016) and TRT Trasporti e Territorio (2015)) includes data capture. Also the
individual reports from the LOGMOS project (Egis International and Dornier Consulting, 2014)
are most relevant sources of contemporary information and it is available through the
TRACECA website.
This means that TRACECA has continuous monitoring of data delivered by the member states,
but it is often based on national statistics and not particular for TRACECA routes. A
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