A plan to build a Mae Sot-Mukdahan railway as part of a transportation link between four Indochina countries is likely to be the first Thai-Japanese railway project to be built.
The State Railway of Thailand (SRT) has already finished the study of a 718-kilometre route connecting Tak's Mae Sot district in the west to Mukdahan in the northeast of Thailand.
The SRT has also handed its findings to Japanese experts, Transport Minister Arkhom Termpittayapaisith said after a meeting on three Thai-Japanese projects yesterday.
The details of two sections of the route — Mae Sot-Phitsanulok and Khon Kaen-Mukdahan — will be studied further by Japan which will then decide whether the project is worth investing in, he said.
The project will cause a major change to existing transport from Mae Sot to Mukdahan, which currently relies on roads, as "it [the railway] will save costs on goods transport", Mr Arkhom said.
He also hailed the new rail line as a route to "connect Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam together".
Thailand sits between Myanmar on the west, which borders Mae Sot, and Laos to the east, which is adjacent to Mukdahan.
The Mae Sot-Mukdahan route is expected to facilitate goods transport from Myanmar via Thailand and Laos to Vietnam.
Mr Arkhom said authorities "need to solve any problems that may occur at spots where rail tracks and roads cross each other".
As for a plan to purchase trains, authorities will consider whether, under the Thai-Japanese cooperation context, the country should buy or rent trains from Japan, he said.
The SRT will need 70 locomotives, Mr Arkhom added.
He said Japan has sent experts to study the Mae Sot-Mukdahan route and Bangkok-Chiang Mai and Kanchanaburi-Laem Chabang-Sa Kaeo routes.
Mr Arkhom expects more progress on the Mae Sot-Mukdahan project in the next couple of months.
The two countries can begin work on this new rail route before the Bangkok-Chiang Mai line, the high-speed railway project which is being studied by Japanese experts and scheduled to start by 2018, Mr Arkhom said.
The 672km route from Chiang Mai to Bangkok will offer tourists and business people another way to travel between the capital and the tourist province in the North.