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Malaysia urges Thailand to revive Pan-Asia rail links instead of chasing land bridge dream
- Transport Minister Anthony Loke wants Malaysia to tap into Thailand’s rail network and connect all the way to Laos and China
- His vision is challenged by Thailand’s plan to build a landbridge that would allow ships to circumvent the busy Strait of Malacca
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The last train rolled across a steel bridge spanning the banks of the Golok River between Malaysia and Thailand 18 years ago. Now, the approaches at either end are sealed – rust and floodwaters have gnawed away at the rails alongside the decaying wooden sleepers.
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In Kelantan on the Malaysian side, speaking near the derelict, graffiti-plastered Rantau Panjang station, the country’s Transport Minister Anthony Loke urges support for his vision of rail renewal, and cargo and people moving at high speeds from China to Singapore.
The aim is to upgrade Rantau Panjang into a key connection point along a Pan-Asian rail network, a once-distant dream that appears closer than ever to becoming a reality.
“If we reconnect the rail network … we will tap into Thailand’s entire network and from there all the way to Laos and China,” Loke told This Week in Asia. “We can eventually have a Pan-Asian railway.”
Built over a century ago in 1921, the ‘Friendship Bridge’ between Rantau Panjang in Malaysia and the town of Su-ngai Kolok in Thailand, is just 65 metres (213 feet) long.
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But the gap also represents competing visions for the connectivity of the Mekong and the Malay Peninsula.
On Malaysia’s side, the plan is to construct the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) from the shipping hub of Port Klang on the west coast to the eastern states of Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang, replacing an obsolete colonial-era line with the latest rail infrastructure built by Chinese companies.
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