Asian Highway Network

The Asian Highways Project (English Asian Highway Project ( AH) ) is a cooperative project between the 32 Asian countries and the United Nations ( ESCAP ), to expand the Asian highway network.

General

The Asian Highways Project is one of the three pillars of Asian Land Transport Infrastructure Development ( ALTID ) project ( project for the Asian overland transport infrastructure ), which was signed by the ESCAP Commission during its 48th session in 1992.

The three pillars are:

The Asian Highway project
The Trans- Asian rail link
The promotion of overland transport projects

History

The AH project was initiated in 1959 by the United Nations launched with the aim of promoting the development of international road transport network in Asia. While considerable progress has been made during the first phase of the project from 1960 to 1970. But when in 1975 the funding was stopped, progress slowed down.

ESCAP conducted various projects with the AH- Members after ALTID was signed in 1992.

The Intergovernmental Agreement on the Asian Highway Network ( IGA) was approved in the Intergovernmental Meeting on 18 November 2003. The IGA includes Annex I with a, the names of 55 different AH routes with a total length of about 140,000 km within the 32 Member States, and Annex II, the Catalog Classification and Design Standards ( classification and design standards). During the 60th meeting of ESCAP in Shanghai (China) in April 2004, the IGA treaty was signed by 23 states.

For the route of AH 1 while a distance of Tokyo has been proposed to Istanbul. This would thereby lead to both North Korea and South Korea, China and other countries in the South West and South Asia and Central Asia. The route is to strengthen trade relations between the countries of East Asia (especially India and China).

To extend the distance to existing roads expanded and new sections are built.

Meanwhile, 26 billion U.S. dollars have been invested in the improvement of existing road sections. As before, however, missing 18 billion U.S. dollars to finance the project.

Signs

In the project documents a uniform designation of highways is proposed - they begin with the letters "AH" ( for " Asian Highway " ) followed by one, two or three digits. The letters and numbers using western script with the Roman alphabet and Arabic numerals. Similarly, the award of the Europe streets the names can also be integrated into existing signs. Highways with a digit pull through Asia in full size, while the streets with three digits are limited to regional links - highways with two digits are longer regional highways, some of which also cross national borders.

A uniform design of the signs has not been set, the font should be kept in white or black, but color, shape and size of the shield are completely optional. Most examples show a rectangular blue sign with white letters ( the German highway signs similar ) show other examples of white on green and black on a white rectangular plate.