Proposed Karachi-Rasht railway system (KRR) and its impacts on the development of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan

This research represents an analysis of the developmental impacts of a proposed international railway system. The proposed railway extends an approximate length of 2000 miles from Karachi on the Persian Gulf, through Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan (the PIA Region), to Rasht on the Caspian Sea. The proposed link, named the Karachi—Rasht Railway (KRR), as a single integrated system is expected to have profound effects in enhancing the overall development of the PIA region.

The KRR's developmental impacts were partially identified through the study of an existing, analogous international transportation link, C the "Suez Canal." Furthermore, the present levels of selected developmental factors were gauged in relation to the socio-economic characteristics of the PIA region; their future levels were projected in the context of the impacts of the KRR. In the process of this analysis, the PIA region was compared with two other areas: (1) Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania (UKT) and (2) Switzerland, West Germany, and France (SGF). The UKT region has similar socio-economic characteristics to the PIA region, but the SGF region is radically different. Yet both are similar in that they were affected by the Suez Canal and each is linked internally by an international railway system. These facts helped provide comparative data for estimating the future levels of the identified developmental events relevant to the impacts of the KRR.

The KRR is expected to enhance developments such as energy consumption, urban population, food production, life expectancy, existing highway and railway systems, the literacy rate, exports, imports, political harmony, foreign aid, per capita income, tourist receipts, and so on. To measure the likelihood of occurrence of each of these types of developmental events, various forecasting methods were analyzed. The cross impact technique (CIT) was selected for this purpose because of its simplicity, reliability, accuracy, flexibility in utilizing available data, and its role in measuring the long-range impacts of the KRR.

As a first step in the CIT, relationships between the identified 25 developmental events were established and an initial probability, with an occurrence date, assigned to each event. The CIT, programmed in FORTRAN for the IBM 370/158, then was employed to generate final (horizon year) probability estimates, which are believed to be adequate indicators of how various events might be affected by the KRR. With three minutes of computer time, the CIT incorporated the interaction among the events and estimated the likelihood of occurrence of each event. Because of the judged interactions among the events, there was an increase in the final probability of occurrence of energy consumption, urban population, World Bank lending, tourist receipts, food production, per capita income, exports, life expectancy, and literacy rate. In addition, sensitivity analyses were performed by changing certain input values indicating the most direct significant effects of increased rail route length on increasing World Bank lending, road network lengths, tourist receipts, per capita energy consumption, food production, life expectancy, diversity of religions, and removal of tariffs and taxes.

It is believed that the proposed KRR would significantly reduce the present trans—shipment problems, costs, congestion, and delay in the PIA region and would help lower the barrier which at present interferes with concerted efforts towards development.

The CIT was found to be a suitable methodology for this research and possibly for similar situations where a proposed single development will predictably involve many interactions, not only with the existing situation, but also with secondary events provoked by the originally proposed development.

Generally speaking, the systematic steps used in this research could be used as a guide for gauging similar undertakings. The study should be updated with changing conditions, reorientated objectives, better data, and improvements in understanding of the technique's parameters and of computational capabilities.