Data Sheet 1_Capacity without passengers: a five-condition framework for converting Silk Road freight corridors into sustainable heritage tourism corridors.pdf

Only the China-Laos Railway corridor (Kunming-Vientiane) shows the clearest signature of conversion—growing cross-border passenger flows to heritage-proximate nodes—though multi-country itineraries and integrated products are inferred, not directly observed. It satisfies C1 and C4 but only partially C2, C3, and C5, showing ticketing integration and a common third-country visa are enablers, not preconditions, and conversion does not secure sustainability.

Measured against this benchmark, the western corridors are heritage-rich but constrained by C1, C3, and C4—scheduled service, interoperable ticketing and heritage-serving routing—not by heritage endowment or visa policy: these are institutional, not capital, problems. Modal analysis shows the emissions-minimizing rail configuration distributes visitor expenditure most widely. This study argues that cross-border passenger volume, not freight tonnage, should be a headline corridor indicator.</p>