Roads are the arteries through which the economy pulses. They connect sellers to markets, workers to jobs, students to education, and the sick to hospitals. Yet much of the developing world, Africa in particular, lacks adequate transportation infrastructure. Accordingly investments in transportation remain a cornerstone of the development agenda. Sub-Saharan Africa spends roughly $6.8 billion per year on paving roads, and the World Bank invests more on roads than on education, health, and social services combined. Despite the development focus on transportation, methodologies for evaluating which road projects to fund are often dis-jointed and unreliable. This report hopes to improve upon the current approaches by establishing a new methodology for prioritization which can be applied to a diverse set of scenarios, regions, and projects. This book demonstrates how modern econometrics and geospatial techniques can be combined to analyze the latest available geo-referenced datasets at the smallest possible scale to answer some of the most important questions in development. Uniquely this report attempts to shed light on some of the most profound puzzles in determining the impacts of roads and where to locate these. Does road infrastructure unleash a virtuous growth cycle? Is it advisable to improve roads in conflict prone zones? What is the effect of improving market access on farming practices? And what are the impacts of roads on forests and biodiversity? It is envisioned that the approach used in this book can be a reference guide to researchers from across the spectrum of international development, who are seeking new tools and insights into the many issues (technical and non-technical) of this important field.

This report describes evaluation methods for transport infrastructure investments to ensure that scarce resources are allocated in a way that maximises their net return to society.

This timely book puts transport cost benefit analysis in a wider, institutional perspective, relating it in particular to decision making. The book will be of interest to practitioners, consultants and academics who are active in the evaluation of transport projects. Erik T. Verhoef, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands This is an important piece of work on project evaluation. An attractive feature is the balanced treatment of theory and application. The book provides very useful information on efforts of national governments in various countries to increase the quality of project evaluation studies by formulating guidelines for project evaluation. One of the strong points of the book is that it does not only address technical aspects of project evaluation tools, but also the institutional structures within which decisions are taken. Piet Rietveld, Vrije Universiteit and Tinbergen Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands This book revisits traditional evaluation methods, such as cost benefit analysis, to try and find a balance between the ever-increasing demand for transport, the search for sustainable mobility and green transport solutions, and the limited financial resources that governments are able to invest in transport infrastructure projects. In this respect, the effects of transport policy need to be measured and evaluated based on multiple criteria and the need to take into consideration a larger group of stakeholders and investors in transport projects. The book illustrates, methodologically and empirically, why and how the institutional and multi-actor environment impacts upon the analysis, evaluation and decision-making of transport projects in Europe. Including contributions from scholars with considerable expertise in the field, this book will be of great interest to consultants, policymakers and researchers.

An introduction to the application of cost-benefit analysis to transportation investments in developing countries.

The economic evaluation of a project in any sector entails the measurement and comparison of cost and benefit streams expected from alternative investments. This paper presents an exposition of the social surplus method of measuring benefits. The exposition is intended to shed light on the nature of benefits to be expected from road transport projects, both with and without various types of market imperfections, and in particular, to show how these benefits relate to changes in the supply and demand of transported commodities. Thus one purpose of the paper is purely expository; to record the economic mechanics behind the social surplus method of benefit evaluation as applied to road projects. In the following chapters, the paper presents a method of measuring benefits which takes traffic responses into account, discusses the factors underlying their relative importance, relates the benefits to associated changes in the production and consumption of the transported commodity, and interprets the impact of market imperfections on benefit measurement.

This book discusses the full economic benefits - and costs - of transport infrastructure and explores ways to make good estimates of the full impact of planned investments on regional and national economies.

This report sets out several of the recent advances, and suggests the most promising approaches, to the quantification and valuation of some of the wider economic benefits that flow from transport-related development. Economic appraisal can offer decision-makers important insights into the ...

Mobility is fundamental to economic and social activities such as commuting, manufacturing, or supplying energy. Each movement has an origin, a potential set of intermediate locations, a destination, and a nature which is linked with geographical attributes. Transport systems composed of infrastructures, modes and terminals are so embedded in the socio-economic life of individuals, institutions and corporations that they are often invisible to the consumer. This is paradoxical as the perceived invisibility of transportation is derived from its efficiency. Understanding how mobility is linked with geography is main the purpose of this book. The third edition of The Geography of Transport Systems has been revised and updated to provide an overview of the spatial aspects of transportation. This text provides greater discussion of security, energy, green logistics, as well as new and updated case studies, a revised content structure, and new figures. Each chapter covers a specific conceptual dimension including networks, modes, terminals, freight transportation, urban transportation and environmental impacts. A final chapter contains core methodologies linked with transport geography such as accessibility, spatial interactions, graph theory and Geographic Information Systems for transportation (GIS-T). This book provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the field, with a broad overview of its concepts, methods, and areas of application. The accompanying website for this text contains a useful additional material, including digital maps, PowerPoint slides, databases, and links to further reading and websites. The website can be accessed at: http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans This text is an essential resource for undergraduates studying transport geography, as well as those interest in economic and urban geography, transport planning and engineering.

When in 1989 the authors started research on infrastructure, they did not foresee that this would lead to a long-term involvement in this area. Our beginning happened to coincide with the publication of David Aschauer's article on public capital and productivity, which induced a large flow of publications in this field. Infrastructure has indeed been a hot topic in policy and research during the past decade. It is surprising, however, that the number of monographs on spatial and economic impacts of infrastructure has remained very limited. The aim of this book is to contribute to the literature in a consolidated way. A distinguishing feature of our book is that we analyze infrastructure impacts using various methods (both modelling and non-modelling) at a variety of spatial levels (from local to international). Other special features are that we make ample use of 'accessibility' as a bridge concept between the areas of infrastructure and the economy. Finally, we not only treat transport infrastructure projects as given, as is the usual approach in infrastructure impact research, but we also analyze the factors influencing infrastructure supply. We have adopted a mainly non-technical approach throughout most of the book. This means that it can also be used by readers without a strong back ground in statistics, modelling or micro-economics.