Pan European Transport Corridors
Overview
The Pan-European Transport Corridors represent the ten key multimodal transport links of the Central and Eastern European transport infrastructure development program of the European Commission, ECMT and UNECE in 1994 (source: United Nations, 2009). The nine corridors consist of a set of eight rail and road links with a total length of 18,000 kilometers and one an inland waterway link, the river Danube.
Corridors I-X
The list of ten Pan European Transport Networks (See Map 3);
• Corridor I, from Helsinki to Warsaw (first branch) and Gdansk (second branch) connecting Riga.
• Corridor II, from Berlin to Moscow connecting Poznan, Warsaw, Brest, Minsk and Smolensk.
• Corridor III, from Kiev to Brussels connecting Aachen, Cologne, Dresden, Wrocław, Katowice, Krakow and Lviv.
• Corridor IV, from Dresden to Istanbul connecting Prague, Vienna, Budapest Craiova, Sofia, Thessaloniki, Plovdiv and Istanbul.
• Corridor V, the East-West corridor, from Venice to Kiev through Trieste, Ljubljana, Budapest, Uzhhorod, Lviv and Kiev.
• Corridor VI, the North-South corridor, from Gdansk to Brno connecting Katowice, Zilina, including a western branch, Katowice-Brno.
• Corridor VII, the Northwest-Southeast corridor or the 2300 km long Danube River.
• Corridor VIII, from Durres to Constanta connecting Tirana, Skopje, Sofia, Plovdiv, Burgas, Varna.
• Corridor IX, from Helsinki to Alexandroupolis connecting Vyborg, St. Petersburg Pskov, Gomel, Kiev, Ljubashevka, Chisinau, Bucharest and Dimitrovgrad, with three further branches.
• Corridor X from Salzburg to Thessaloniki connecting Ljubljana - Zagreb -Beograd, Nis, Skopje, Veles and Thessaloniki, with four further branches including the branch of Budapest in Hungary.
Map 3
Source: ec.europa.eu
Map of ten railway corridors in Europe In the third Pan-European Transport Conference in 1997 the corridors and the original guidelines were adopted for the development of the EU Trans European Network (TEN-T). The third conference added two extensions to the original concept:
• Corridor V, from Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod, connecting Europe with the Trans-Siberian Route (TSR), which represents a key link between Europe and Asia.
• Corridor X, to the former states of Yugoslavia.
In present context there are four corridors which have relevance. These are;
• Corridor IV, from Dresden to Istanbul connecting Prague, Vienna, Budapest Craiova, Sofia, Thessaloniki, Plovdiv and Istanbul.
• Corridor V, the East-West corridor, from Venice to Kiev through Trieste, Ljubljana, Budapest, Uzhhorod, Lviv and Kiev.
• Corridor VII, the Northwest-Southeast corridor or the 2300 km long Danube River.
• Corridor X from Salzburg to Thessaloniki connecting Ljubljana - Zagreb -Beograd, Nis, Skopje, Veles and Thessaloniki, with four further branches including the branch of Budapest in Hungary.
The Euro-Asian Corridors represent the four major transport routes in Asia extending the Pan-European Transport Corridors to the East (source: United Nations, 2009). The development of the Corridors is based on the initiative of UNECE and UNESCAP including 18 countries and financial institutions such as the World Bank, EBRD and the Asian Development Bank. The rail lines and roads include the Trans-Siberian routes (between the borders of the EU and the Pacific Ocean). It also includes links with the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, the Caucasus, Persian-Gulf, Chinese shores. The inland water links include the connection between the river Danube and the Black Sea, the river Volga, river Don and river Dnepr.