Transport patterns within the Balkan region are undergoing a series of step changes resulting from the war in Yugoslavia and the reorientation of trade to western Europe. This has on the one hand made plans of the transport system redundant or at best underutilised, i.e. some railway and inland waterway corridors, whilst at the same time other parts of the transport network, e.g. certain ports and roads, are overloaded. As a result of the need for a coherent and comprehensive strategy for the region, Sir Alexander Gibb & Partners was commissioned by the European Union PHARE programme to undertake a nine month transport study of the Balkans, covering road, rail, inland waterways combined transport and short sea shipping modes. This paper draws on the author's experience of the transport situation in the Balkans and Gibb's study to describe existing transport movements along road, rail, inland waterways and short sea shipping corridors; outline the existing bottlenecks as a result of both institutional and missing or inadequate infrastructure most notably border crossings and procedures; comment on likely future travel demands across all modes and the forecasting techniques used to generate such projections; and identify alternative transport strategies for the region based on sound economic, financial and engineering analysis.
Abstract