via CAAI
By Anasuya Sanyal | Posted: 28 October 2010
PHNOM PENH: A complete overhaul of Cambodia's crumbling railway system is expected by 2013, restoring what was once a preferred mode of transport in the Kingdom.
Cambodia's national rail service has all but come to a halt.
The past three decades of conflict and neglect took their toll, leaving bogies riddled with bullet holes and flat bed locomotives with machine gun mounts.
It's been eight years since passenger trains operate and even then service was unreliable and irregular.
But a new US$141 million project spearheaded by the Asian Development Bank and the Australian and Cambodian governments will revitalise both existing railway lines.
The Northern Line will stretch west from the capital Phnom Penh to Poi Pet at the Thai border, while the Southern Line goes down to Sihanoukville on the coast-a total of 650 kilometres.
Cambodia's rapid economic development means roads are the main way to move bulky and hazardous cargo.
Transporting it by rail instead is one of the initial goals of the project, making roads safer and less congested.
Asian Development Bank's country director, Cambodia Putu M Kamayana said: "This first phase is only the 120 kilometre line to the cement factory in Kampot and perhaps there will be much more passenger traffic demand once the link to Sihanoukville port is completed because that's also a tourism destination".
There is also hope Cambodia could one day be a regional logistics hub.
Asian Development Bank's senior transport economist Peter Broch said: "If you consider, Cambodia is sitting right between the two primary economic centres in the southern part of the Greater Mekong Subregion.
"On one side you have Thailand and in particular with huge commercial areas and population areas around bangkok.
"On the other side you have Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta, both of them very large economic zones in Vietnam".
An Australian company, Toll Logistics, has won a 30-year concession to run the new railway, jointly with the government.
Part of its operations will be to manage the people who live and work right next to the track.
Toll Global Logistics president/CEO Wayne Hunt said: "The local communities then started to encroach on the railway, then seeing that as an opportunity for them to be able to have more space in their living
"So one of the biggest challenges for all of us has been to be able to ensure to keep everyone informed and to explain to the people of Cambodia the benefits of the railway as we then we go through a process of being able to rehabilitate the rail track and also relocate some of the people".
The government will assist and compensate those who need to move.
And ADB's initial studies found around 200 households would have to be resettled.
But for now, people can't take their eyes off the refurbished bright yellow train.
Eighty-two-year-old Hen Seng has been living in Phnom Penh since the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979.
"I've never seen a restored train like this one coming down the track, only the old ones so it's really exciting to see the new train," he said.
Many along the lines said they hope to expand their businesses and earn more money when the trains start running regularly.
Phase two of the project aims to link Cambodia to Vietnam which will complete the rail link between Singapore, and Kunming in China, by 2015.
-CNA/wk
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