Improving Transnational Transport Corridors
In the OIC Member Countries: Concepts and Cases
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Figure 4: Silk Route – Network
Source: Wikipedia (2017).
An imperative is to define what a transport corridor actually is and surprisingly the definitions
are rather few and somewhat limited. One is that a transport corridor is “ generally linear area
that is defined by one or more modes of transportation lik o which
share a common course. Development often occurs around transportation corridors because they
carry so many people, creating linear agglomerations like th or the linear form
of many neighborhood retail areas”2. Such a definition is clearly very narrow when compared to
the immensity and diversity of the silk route, the contemporary version of which is TRACECA.
Many observers believed that the TRACECA was much more of a mode of political influence,
than one of trade or transport. TRACECA was the medium thought which the European Union
intended to extend its dialogue with the New Independent States (NIS) of the former USSR
(Nuriyev, 2008, Dekanozishvili, 2004, Burkhanov, 2007). Consequently, the definition of a
transport corridor depends on its objectives. If mostly political, then expect the corridor to
become an almost nebulous network of routes that merely has a common geographical
orientation. But if the corridor has economic objectives then expect it to be of a much narrower
format offering traders and travellers the shortest and least costly alternative.
One of the modern complexities of contemporary corridor development is the influence of
international funding agencies, commonly known as IFIs, like the World Bank, the Asian
Development Bank and the European Union, If these erstwhile bodies find it administratively
expedient to disperse funding to regions or corridors in preference to individual countries