WIT Press


Is Rail Traffic Useful Or Necessary For Regional Development?

Price

Free (open access)

Volume

75

Pages

9

Published

2004

Size

712 kb

Paper DOI

10.2495/UT040841

Copyright

WIT Press

Author(s)

F.R. Haferkorn & C. Schürmann

Abstract

In the language of financers the ends of regional development may be described by high prosperity and low poverty. Showing that installing, upgrading or extending rail infrastructure and transport in a region and between neighbouring regions will be accepted by freight and passenger traffic which will help to develop the economic base of the regions concerned may be a strong argument for railway or urban transport projects. The article suggests a simplified methodological toolkit to assess impacts of transport infrastructure projects on regional development, suitable for developing countries, and presents some first preliminary results for Vietnam derived from linear regression models for regions under development, applied to two railways development scenarios.

Keywords