News
Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) recently announced that a transport operation will be made on a trial basis on March 8-13 on the route from Rayong (Thailand)—via Savannakhet (Laos) and Da Nan (Vietnam)—to Hanoi (Vietnam). The government of Japan intends to develop an international multimodal transport system in the East-West Economic Corridor by encouraging local trucking and Vietnamese railway services to work together. The program is part of Tokyo’s Asian logistics pilot projects for fiscal 2014 (April 2014-March 2015).
During the trial transport, a cross-border cold-chain service with reefer containers will also be tested.
The ministry hopes to find challenges to overcome to run a multimodal service, such as problems that could arise from transshipment to and from railways; to verify what improvements the service would produce and to understand systems and formalities for obtaining business approvals and licenses.
To transport shipments from southern Thailand to northern Vietnam, trucking services are also available in the East-West Economic Corridor in addition to seaborne services. However, it is feared that operating many trucks could generate traffic jams and increase burdens on roads. As such, the MLIT will carry out the trial as part of its projects for multimodal transport by combining trucking and railway services to develop a new logistics route to contribute to modal shifts.
