YEAR IN REVIEW 1996: TRANSPORTATION

AVIATION (For Notable Civil Engineering Projects, see Table.) World airline traffic, both passenger and freight, took off in 1995 to such an extent that a few of the bigger carriers, while awaiting the arrival of a new generation of high-capacity aircraft, had to turn away some business. The first major airport to be completed in the U.S. in 21 years--Denver (Colo.) International Airport--opened in February, late and over budget. Macau's new airport was expected to open by year-end. The French authorities reopened Paris' Orly airport to additional international competition in January and announced that a site was being sought for a third airport in the Paris area. According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the UN aviation body, total scheduled passenger traffic rose 6% in 1995 and was projected to go up by a further 7% in both 1996 and 1997. Airlines in the Asia-Pacific area, spurred by high economic growth, were expected to show the largest gains, although below the impressive 12% that they recorded in 1994. Passenger traffic of African and North American airlines showed rising trends, but the total volume was expected to be below the world average throughout the forecast period. European airlines showed steadily improving growth as a result of increasingly competitive market conditions within the European Union and the stabilization of aviation markets in the Commonwealth of Independent States. The ICAO projected that Latin-American and Caribbean airlines would improve their traffic growth and approach the world average. Growth among airlines in the Middle East was expected to remain close to the world average. Estimates from the airlines' trade body, the International Air Transport Association, generally confirmed the ICAO's projections. Boeing's new 400-plus-seat, twin-engine 777 airliner entered service during 1995. The 777, together with the wide-bodied A330 and A340, the newest models from the European Airbus Industrie consortium began to relieve some traffic pressure on airlines. As jet engines became increasingly reliable, flights became longer, with 12-hour sectors now commonplace between Europe and the Far East and between the east coast of North America and Asia. The problem of how to occupy their customers (and how to expand revenues) on such lengthy flights came close to solution for the airlines with the advent of a new generation of electronic in-flight entertainment. Using small video screens in the seat backs, passengers were able to view (and pay for) movies, shop for items on display, or play gambling games such as poker, roulette, and dice. Vendors promised the airlines that income from each wide-bodied airliner so equipped could be as high as $2 million a year. Looking beyond the new 400-seat aircraft, airlines continued to study the future economic, financial, and logistic implications of a proposed "super-jumbo" family of double-deck airliners with 600, 700, and even 1,000 seats. Such a project between the U.S. and four European nations was put on hold during 1995 on the grounds that although technically feasible, there was insufficient interest among the airlines. Nonetheless, Airbus Industrie continued with designs for its 600-seat project, the A3XX. At the same time, the major world aircraft manufacturers were exploring the possibility of developing a 250-seat supersonic airliner to succeed the Concorde sometime in the first decade of the 21st century. In other technological developments, the first operational use of navigation via satellite took place in the South Pacific in 1995. "Free flight," a concept that would allow crews of individual aircraft to select the most economic flight paths with minimal contact with air traffic control, was under intense review. Increasing freedom in the air was not matched on the ground. The industry complained bitterly about skyrocketing ticket and airport taxes at 1,000 facilities--double the number in 1989. Total charges paid by airlines for using airports and navigation facilities increased to $9.9 billion--9% of operating costs--and constituted the second largest expense after fuel. (ARTHUR REED) FREIGHT AND PIPELINES Worldwide freight volumes, as reflected by container movements, showed modest rises in 1995, while the busiest activity continued to be in the Pacific Rim. Singapore, which began restructuring for outright privatization, and Hong Kong retained their status as the busiest ports. Both ports were above the level of 10 million TEU (20-ft equivalent units) per annum. Linked to this was growth in China of container crane and container manufacturing. Penang, Malaysia, embarked on a major capital expenditure to cope with an annual growth of 16% over the previous eight years, and Manila developed new intermodal freight services. Intermodalism, which was pioneered in Europe, continued to gather strength. A Pan-European Transport System initiative was promoted by the European Union to facilitate trade and economic development, with a focus on maintaining the balance of road, rail, and waterway traffic in Eastern Europe and avoiding domination by road transport. In the U.S., rapid growth in intermodal trade had put a great strain on service reliability. This led to plans for the development of new "mega terminals" in six U.S. West Coast ports and might prompt a decline in medium-sized container ports. Pipeline construction was down by 5% in 1995. Decline in the U.S. was linked to the cost of meeting environmental, safety, and regulatory mandates, while Russian recession and political upheaval reduced activity. Nonetheless, in Europe and especially the Far East, new long-distance natural gas networks spurred ambitious new programs. In the U.S. natural gas schemes prevailed. Of significance were expansions in California, with 1,489 km (1 km=0.62 mi) of pipeline laid, and a 604-km line from Malin, Ore., to Reno, Nev. In Europe the focus of gas-line construction was in the North Sea and Spain. Plans were made to lay dual 122-cm (48-in) pipes across the Baydarata Bay as part of the development of the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia. Oman planned a 1,135-km crossing of the Arabian Sea, while Australia went ahead with a 1,400-km 20.3-cm (8-in) ethane line from Moomba to Botany. Other major developments included a start on phase three of the 645-km line extension to Bukit Ketei, Malaysia, and major gas lines in South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, and China. In South America there were plans to link Bolivia with Brazil and to construct a 1,200-km main line from Argentina to Chile. INTERCITY RAIL (For Notable Civil Engineering Projects, see Table.) In addition to privatization initiatives, many of the world's railways underwent significant restructuring as part of a search for increased productivity in 1995. In the U.S. this took the form of cooperation between rail operators, while in Europe the movement was toward a divestment of responsibilities from governments to private operators and greater access to networks. Automation, BOT (build, own/operate, transfer) schemes, and privatization were thought to open the way for sustaining investment in railways. Some 30 countries had privatization programs, ranging from total sell-off (Brazil, Britain, the Czech Republic, and New Zealand) to more modest goals involving commercial operations (Austria, Finland) or maintenance services (Mexico). Overnight services were reintroduced, and security became an important issue with the derailment by sabotage of an Amtrak passenger train in Arizona. High speed trains (HST) remained the flagship service of many operators. Sweden introduced 250-km/h trains from Sdertlje to Stockholm, and an extension of the European network was spearheaded by the new Thalys system linking Paris, Brussels, and Cologne, Germany. Italy started a Rome-to-Naples service, and both Russia and South Korea began studying high-speed systems with private investment. China opened two sections of a 1,300-km rail link from Beijing to Kowloon, Hong Kong, which was intended eventually to utilize HST units. Increased speed was the main concern for both a new express diesel TGV (Train Grande Vitesse) and a new 360 km/h prototype in France. Gas turbine vehicles were reconsidered in the U.S. in order for emissions standards to be met. Tilting trains, which provided enhanced performance, were introduced in New South Wales and Brisbane, Australia; Finland; and Switzerland. Extra capacity was provided by double-decked rolling stock in Russia, The Netherlands, and Italy. In the U.S., triple loading of containers was tested, while automation of train-control networks scaled new heights with a 37,350-route kilometre system controlled from Fort Worth, Texas. Iran opened the 635-km link from Bandar Abbas to Bafq, and the 248-km line for grain shipments in Brazil reached Cascavel. South Africa proposed a major rehabilitation of its Metro Rail system. The opening of the Sarnia Tunnel under the St. Clair River in Canada, the 6.5-km Karbube Kowkan tunnel in India, and the 6.3-km Grauholz Tunnel for Swiss Federal Railways were other noteworthy achievements during 1995. ROADS AND TRAFFIC (For Notable Civil Engineering Projects, see Table.) Priority for improvement and extension of road networks varied considerably around the world in 1995, depending largely upon degrees of motorization, urbanization, and economic development. Members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development were concerned with the dominance of road transport, which threatened environmental gains made by improved emission standards. The use of unleaded gasoline (petrol) in the European Union rose to 60% in 1994, with Austria, Finland, and Sweden recording 99%. Emissions from diesel engines were recognized as a health hazard. In Stockholm 12 km of a 14-km ring road were constructed as a tunnel for environmental reasons, although urban tunneling projects were usually used to overcome key natural obstacles. The $500 million immersed tube linking Kobe, Japan, with Port Island, the $32 million Preveza-Aktio tunnel in Greece, and the $554 million Elbe Tunnel in Hamburg, Germany, all began construction during 1995. In the U.K. local authorities sought to provide a second crossing to the River Tyne, and authorities in Sydney, Australia, planned a $120 million double-decked tunnel in the downtown area. In Seoul, South Korea, the twin 1.8-km pilot tunnels for the Bukak road project were completed. Development of key national links were typified by plans to build a 6.8-km tunnel to connect Magery, an island off of Norway, to the mainland. In the U.S. plans were in place to expand the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, which at 28 km was still one of the longest crossings in the world. Funding was in hand for the $67 million, 33-km Lakhdaria-Bouria section of the trans-Algerian motorway, while in Bolivia there were plans for a 50-km Cotapata-Santa Barbara road link to the Pacific. The most ambitious project was a 30-year, 35,000-km motorway network in China, which included a section of the "Silk Road" project that would connect the Middle East and Europe. Authorities in Germany were reviewing plans to enhance urban pedestrian movement with the construction of a people mover system to link metro stations in Dsseldorf, Germany, while Singapore examined similar schemes for improving access to its metro. SHIPPING AND PORTS The world shipping fleet continued to show a steady growth. In 1994 total size stood at 475.9 million gross tons (gt), an annual increase of 17.9 million gt--the largest in at least 10 years. Traffic increased as well, and in January 1995, partly because of an overhaul of the locks, Panama Canal officials reported the worst bottleneck in the canal's history, with delays in transit averaging a week. Normally 35 ships could pass through the facility in a day. Much concern continued over the increasing age of the world fleet. At the start of 1995, about 58.4% (49.8% of total deadweight tons ) was over 14 years old, and the average age of the world fleet was 17.3 years. Important new measures from the UN's International Maritime Organization (IMO) to improve the safety of existing oil tankers came into operation on July 6. These included an enhanced program of inspections applying to all oil tankers aged five years and older and changes to the construction requirements of tankers aged 25 years and older, including mandatory fitting of double hulls or an equivalent design. The IMO also set up a panel of experts after the sinking of the "roll-on, roll-off" ferry Estonia in the Baltic Sea in September 1994, but the London-based organization received criticism from many quarters throughout 1995 for moving too timidly and too slowly on the issue of ferry safety. Following the June council meeting of the International Association of Classification Societies, details were released of a program to reinforce member societies' increasingly tough stance on safety compliance. The program included further tightening of the Transfer of Class Agreement, greater transparency of class and statutory information, and automatic suspension of class under specific circumstances. The first ship bearing Green Award certification, the 254,000-dwt Ambon, owned by ICB Shipping of Sweden, called at the port of Rotterdam, Neth. The Green Award scheme was an initiative of the Rotterdam Municipal Port Management in conjunction with the Dutch Ministry of Transport to promote safe and environmentally friendly ship and crew management. Aimed at oil tankers larger than 50,000 dwt, the scheme rewarded certificated ships with a reduction in port fees. In Russia a change of port-construction priorities halted plans to build three new ports on the Baltic until the port of St. Petersburg had been completely rebuilt. Handling capacity of the modernized port was planned to increase from 21 million to 40 million tons. The three new ports were to have been built on the Gulf of Finland at Ust-Luga, Batareynaya, and Primorsk. The Russians' goal was to have northwestern ports with an annual capacity of 70 million tons. In The Bahamas an $80 million deal for a container transshipment facility in Freeport Harbour was signed between Grand Bahama Development Co. and Hutchinson International Holdings. It was the largest investment in Freeport since the building of an oil refinery in 1960. In August the government of Sri Lanka awarded a $720 million contract to a U.K.-Chinese consortium to build a new port at Galle, 112 km (70 mi) south of Colombo. In the same month, Vietnam approved in principle plans for a $560 million deep-sea port and industrial zone near Haiphong, in the north of the country. (EDWARD CROWLEY) URBAN MASS TRANSIT (For Notable Engineering Projects, see Table.) Cities showed an ever-greater interest in efficient, affordable, and environmentally acceptable mass transit systems in 1995, which continued to open the way for profound changes in urban mobility. Many rail lines were converted to metros (as in Oslo, Norway), and metro networks were upgraded or extended in many areas. Almost without exception, new metros were more likely to be based on light rail transit (LRT) and to include elements of automation in train control or ticketing. Smartcard ticketing systems were on trial in London, Paris, and Sydney, Australia. New metro systems opened during the year in Lima, Peru; Bilbao, Spain; Shanghai; Sheffield, England; and Mexico City, where the fastest-growing metro in the world opened a 10th line. Extensions to metros were opened in Madrid; San Diego, Calif.; and Prague. Many other cities were planning and building metro extensions, including Boston; Cairo; Istanbul; Nagoya, Japan; Nantes, France; Rio de Janeiro; and Toronto. The bulk of urban transit expansion was provided through LRT schemes in both less developed countries and traditional locations, however. Of note were the automated schemes proposed for Turin, Italy, a privatized system for Auckland, N.Z., and a dual-mode (heavy rail/LRT) system in Saarbrcken, Germany. Urban transit connections to airports continued to proliferate, with structures either under construction or planned in Berlin; Bangkok, Thailand; Hong Kong; Madrid; Pusan, South Korea; Osaka, Japan; San Francisco; and Sydney. The Arlanda Airport at Stockholm was a BOM (build, operate, and maintain) project. Improvements in buses, which provided the backbone for most urban services, were mainly expansions of fleets to meet higher environmental standards or the restructuring of services to link existing lines to new LRT services. (JOHN H. EARP) See also Architecture and Civil Engineering; Business and Industry Review: Aerospace; Automobiles; Energy; The Environment. This updates the article transportation, history of. World Affairs The crosscurrents of peace and war, of both agreement and conflict, were as much in appearance in 1995 as they had been in 1994, and it was impossible to say with certainty which of the two trends was prevailing in world politics. The agreement concluded in 1994 between the United States and North Korea concerning nuclear reactors was implemented during 1995. In May 1995, for the first time in 23 years, representatives of the British government met leaders of the Irish Republican Army in an attempt to find a solution to a conflict that had claimed thousands of victims over two decades. In March the Syrian government made it known that it would establish relations with Israel if the Golan Heights was restored to its sovereignty. More important, on September 28 in Washington, D.C., Palestinian and Israeli leaders signed an accord that scheduled an end to Israeli occupation of the main urban centres of the West Bank by March 1996. It was not clear what effect the assassination of Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin (see OBITUARIES), would have on the continuation of the peace process. Even in former Yugoslavia a cease-fire came into being in October that effectively split Bosnia and Herzegovina more or less equally between the existing Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian government. The cease-fire followed intensification of the civil war, a Croatian offensive in the Slavonia region and in northern Bosnia, and, for the first time, NATO bombing of the Bosnian Serbs in an attempt to end their shelling of Sarajevo and to compel them to withdraw their heavy weapons from the area. Encouraging as such developments were, there was universal agreement that the road to peace in all these conflicts was still long and that even the achievements already gained were not secure and could be undone by the enemies of peace. Particularly in former Yugoslavia there still was danger that ethnic conflicts could turn into war between states that might involve countries that had previously stayed out of the conflict. Furthermore, old conflicts continued, such as the fighting between Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda and Burundi in February and March, which led to a new exodus and thousands of victims. Also in March Turkish forces crossed the Iraqi border and in the course of a two-month campaign battled the Kurdish separatists who had launched guerrilla attacks from bases there. Worldwide attention was drawn to the Russian invasion of Chechnya in December 1994; fighting in the northern Caucasus lasted throughout 1995--despite a cease-fire ordered by Pres. Boris Yeltsin in June--and revealed surprising weaknesses in the morale, organization, and effectiveness of the Russian military units. The list of armed conflicts in 1995 was long; it included a war in January between Peru and Ecuador over the demarcation of their state borders, fighting between governments and nationalist separatists (as in Jammu and Kashmir), attacks by religious fanatics (in Algeria, Egypt, and Pakistan), and terrorist actions, both national and international, in the course of which sarin, a highly poisonous gas, was used by Japanese terrorists in an attack in the Tokyo subway in March. The United Nations played no role in the settlement of any of these conflicts except for an ineffectual one in former Yugoslavia. There was no progress on the road toward the establishment of an armed intervention force there, as Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the UN secretary-general, had demanded since 1992. This failure to act decisively in the Balkans further deepened the crisis of the UN, perpetuating its status as an organization without teeth, incapable of taking decisive action. A certain deterioration in the international climate was also felt in the relations between the great powers. China ignored appeals to improve its human rights record; it increased pressure on Taiwan and other neighbours, and relations with the United States were bedeviled by the Chinese reluctance to abide by copyright and other international trade conventions. The United States reacted by imposing temporary trade sanctions and, at the same time, practicing political appeasement. French nuclear tests in the South Pacific created worldwide protests, and anti-Western feelings in Russia spread markedly during the year. The latter development was connected in part with Western initiatives to expand NATO into Eastern Europe, a policy regarded in Moscow as a threat to Russian national security even though Russia had also been invited to join and, in any case, only a loose association had been envisaged. Generally speaking, a trend toward nationalism and populism could be observed in Russia as in Eastern Europe. The West was held responsible for the economic, social, and political failures of recent years, and there was even nostalgia for the past, in which order had prevailed and prices had been stable. The number of those who had materially benefited from reform was relatively small, which led to a backlash bound to manifest itself also in the field of foreign relations. Further tension was generated by the willingness of major nations to supply the technology of arms of mass destruction to rogue countries building up their arsenals to attack or, at the very least, to threaten and blackmail their neighbours. As a result of the defection of two key members of Pres. Saddam Hussein's inner circle, it became known that Iraqi preparations in this direction had been much further advanced than had been anticipated even by confirmed pessimists, and the Iranian nuclear buildup continued with undiminished speed. In Europe and North America the preoccupation with domestic affairs took pride of place, on the basis of the assumption that with all the conflicts occurring, the danger to world peace was now less than in previous decades. The assumption was correct inasmuch as military spending had declined in all major nations. It was wrong, however, in the sense that the absence of international controls made the approach of an age of conflict fought with unconventional weapons even more certain. This view also overrated the extent of international, social, and economic stability. In fact, the world order remained highly vulnerable on all levels, from the disorder of money markets and the weaknesses of many currencies and central banks to growing mass unemployment, not only in countries where it had long been endemic, as in Africa and the Middle East, but also elsewhere. Unemployment among young persons under age 25 was, with few exceptions, in the 20-30% range even in Europe, a grave portent not just for social stability but, in the long run, also for the European political and social system and for international affairs. A worldwide trend toward democratic systems or at least away from dictatorship had been noted in the late 1980s and early 1990s. By late 1995 this trend seemed to have come to a halt in various countries, including France, Italy, and Austria, as well as in Eastern Europe and the states of the former Soviet Union, where authoritarian parties polled more votes than before. In the Middle East religious fundamentalists preached that democracy was an abomination. There was no clear trend that could be defined as either left-wing or right-wing, rather only a feeling of discontent directed against the incumbents, be they conservatives in Britain or Socialists in France and Spain, to give but examples. The discontent was directed against a political system that provided neither economic nor political security; participation in grassroots politics and in elections declined in most parts of the world, and separatism, another frequent phenomenon in recent years, led to demands for strengthening central state power. These were primarily developments witnessed on the domestic scene, but they also were bound to affect relations between nations. The feeling of discontent led to a search for scapegoats, more likely than not to be found among minorities and foreigners. Aggressive nationalism was likely to trigger conflicts not only at home but also between states. At the very least, this negative mood was making cooperation between nations more difficult, and the movement toward greater unity, in Europe as elsewhere, came to a standstill. (WALTER LAQUEUR) This updates the article international relations.