• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
• /
• v.15 no.1
• /
• pp.67-85
• /
• 2009

The Trans-Central Asian Railway consists of the Trans-Caspian Railroad, the Kazalinsk Route, the Turk-Sib, and the Trans-Kazakhstan Trunk Line. Currently, one-fifth of the residents in Central Asia are living around these railroads on which 70% of the economic activities in the region depends. The construction of the railroads in Central Asia was motivated by the Russian Empire's competition 'with its maritime rival, the United Kingdom, over the Eurasian heartland in a geostrategic sense. Using the railroads, the Russian Empire aspired to connect its central industrial regions in European Russia with the remote frontier areas in the Central Asian republics and to increase economic specialization of the region. After the breakdown of the USSR, however, the rail network, which had well been linked among the regions in the former Soviet nations, has been in a deteriorated linkage with their non-Soviet neighboring nations. Despite a lot of problems to be solved, the Trans-Central Asian rail network is expected to play a crucial role as a land bridge between East Asia and Europe as well as between Russia/the Baltic sea and the Indian Ocean/the Persian Gulf in the long-term.