Improving Transnational Transport Corridors
In the OIC Member Countries: Concepts and Cases
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2. Conceptual Framework for Transnational Transport Corridors
2.1. Introduction
Undertaking a literature review is a fundamental step in the research process that enables the
status quo of the issue/s to be understood and the main dependent and independent variable
or parameters to be identified. There is an underlying hypothesis to the study that
international trade and travel if organized in a systematic way along specific routes and
networks will be more successful than a more random approach.
The following two sections take a holistic perspective on multinational transport corridors.
The following sections focus on political, economic, social, safety and security, technical and
operational as well as environmental aspects respectively. The final section puts the chapter
together discussing how corridor performance is monitored and evaluated.
2.2. Main Concepts and Definitions
Corridors are lines of concentration of socio economic activity that connect two or more
sovereign countries. Multi-national transport corridors are viewed in a context of agreements
between states facilitating trade through infrastructure investments and development of
commercial services for moving freight.
The public sector generally takes a large interest in the transport system as part of developing
the society and because transport activities build on economies of scale requiring shared
resources, and that traffic affects also non-users resulting in potentially conflicting goals.
Besides the obvious role of supplying infrastructure, there is often a large share of public
ownership in firms supplying transport services. It is most pertinent in passenger transport
over short distances, but also railways, airlines, forwarders and postal services have a long
tradition of state ownership below shows how multi-lateral corridor agreements fit
into different layers of economic activity.
Figure 1: Multi-lateral corridor agreements in a public and private sector context
Source: Fimotions (2017).