Improving Transnational Transport Corridors

In the OIC Member Countries: Concepts and Cases

125

An ex-post evaluation of the section through Tunisia El Jem - Sfax Motorway – is worth looking

at in more detail

. The average daily traffic of the El Jem - Sfax section as of 2011 was 7,800

vehicles/day, which is 79% of the projected volume for that year according to the JICA

evaluation team. Although one of reasons for that was delay in opening to the public, the

demand projection in the feasibility study was significantly overestimated. However, the traffic

accident rate on the existing national road was lowered by half as may be expected because of

low flow/capacity ratio of the new road. It is expected that this may be typical of other sections

of the route. Improvements in accessibility invariably impact on land price. It is expected that

completion of the project would improve the access to Tunis and promote the integrated

economic development along the Tunis - Sfax section and beyond to the other countries. It is

difficult to directly compare the economic situation between before and after the project in the

qualitative terms. The economic development generated by improving accessibility along the

TAH1 corridor was demonstrated by the changes in land prices, which had increased by 180%

in real terms over a 10-year period before and after the completion of the motorway. This

illustrated the enhanced attraction for investors to establish their businesses within the

corridor. The number of foreign enterprises registered in the corridor section in Tunisia as of

October 2010 was 973 of which 32% were foreign owned, though the country was unspecified.

If they were mostly TAH1 nations, it would be noteworthy. Importantly the businesses created

94,000 employment opportunities.

A traffic analysis was carried out based on the trade matrix above. In the absence of border

post data a proxy for the monetary value and origin and destination of trade can be seen in the

trade matrix in

To covert into transit traffic, the first step in the process was to

convert trade values to trade volumes using a global average value per ton of trade. The data

used for this is given below.



Global Value of Trade 16.5 Trillion



Global Volume

8.4 Billion



Average Value per ton 1,964.3 USD/Ton

The next step was to convert tons of trade per year to trucks per day. Important to note that

there are no international railway connections, that coastal shipping will be used, as will

pipeline for gas and oil, so it was assumed that 60% of trade goes by road, 30 tons per truck

and 40% of trucks return empty. Consequently, the derived daily transit traffic flows from the

process in

indicates that international road freight traffic is very light. This is

corroborated from satellite imagery used in the spatial analysis.

Ex-Post Evaluation of Japanese ODA Loan Project El Jem - Sfax Motorway Construction Project

External Evaluator: Yasuhiro Kawabata, Sanshu Engineering Consultant, 2007