Posts tagged railway

Mongolia’s railway dilemma

By Martin Saxer | October 29, 2011

Mongolia faces a dilemma in which direction to build a new rail link to export coal from its Tavan Tolgoi mines – north to Russia or south to China. Now, the Mongolian government announced a middle way to please both sides. The Moscow Times reports:

Mongolia said it plans to synchronize the openings of two export railways to Russia and China to accelerate coal sales from the Tavan Tolgoi mine, one of the world’s biggest unexploited coal deposits.

It may complete the railways as soon as 2014, Yondon Manlaibayar, director general at Mongolia’s Ministry of Roads, Transport, Construction and Urban Development, said in an interview in Hong Kong.

The consortium headed by Russian Railways is one of the finalists in the bid to develop the western section of Tavan Tolgoi.

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Strategic rail links, ambitious plans, and a broken promise

By Martin Saxer | August 11, 2011

Last week, Delhi announced massive plans for three new railway lines in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, clearly as a response the extension of the Lhasa railway to Nyingtri and thereby unconfortably close to the disputed border between China and India. One of the new Arunachal railway lines will link Tawang (elevation 3,500 m) to the plains of Assam.

Yesterday, Syed Zarir Hussain reported that the Indian railway plans meet with mixed responses in Arunachal Pradesh:

promises have often been made to be broken – a Rs.125 billion Trans-Arunachal Highway announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2008 and expected to be completed by 2013 was shelved before it took off without any reasons cited.

“What we need are projects by New Delhi that could uplift the economic condition of the locals rather than trying to set up infrastructure purely for strategic reasons,” said Bamang Felix, a local civil rights campaigner.

(via TwoCircles.net)

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