To promote trade, investment, and development throughout the Greater Mekong region, a major road corridor improvement was proposed to reduce transportation costs and transit times for passengers and commodities.

Client

Asian Development Bank

Purpose

Identify road improvement scenarios for linking Kunming in China’s Yunan province to the city of Chiang Rai in Northern Thailand by means of an all-weather road corridor passing through the Lao PDR.

Actions

For each scenario,

• Determined if capital investments, including maintenance costs, could be economically justified by the benefits to the countries and financially remunerative to the consignee making the improvements.
• Developed realistic cost estimates on the basis of engineering investigations of road improvements
• Conducted economic development study to determine economic justification for capital and other expenditures
• Reviewed the soundness of the concession agreement and the concessionaire’s development plans
• Analyzed the tradeoffs between a bridge versus a ferry crossing over the Mekong River
• Examined nonphysical border crossing issues
• Used a GIS planning model for the economic and transportation analysis.