Understanding the Value of Transport Infrastructure ...

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UNDERSTANDING THE VALUE OF TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE 3. USING DATA FOR BETTER POLICIES 3.1 Introduction Transport is critical to many aspects of economic life. Transport infrastructure is a necessary input into the production of transport services which, in turn, are vital for the market exchange of final goods and inputs– or for broader welfare benefits. But how much, exactly, does transport infrastructure support economic development and wealth creation? What determines the magnitude of that impact? Lack of (comparable) data limits the quality of macroeconomic analysis. Concerns for policy-relevant analysis can be summarized as: a. Finding out how much (in monetary terms) transport infrastructure there is in the first place; b. Estimating how the stocks evolve over time (i.e. do annual investment flows cover depreciation?); c. Estimating how close to the optimum (growth-maximizing level) the current stock is (i.e. should more or less be invested?); and d. What determines investment (e.g. does fiscal decentralization boost local and regional government infrastructure investment?). Based on this, analysts can support policymaking by assessing the impact of changes of direction. The important caveat remains that project selection should still be based on cost-benefit assessment because even if the stock of transport infrastructure assets is close to its optimum, there may still be a number of welfare-enhancing individual projects. In addition to these macroeconomic analysis, statistics on transport infrastructure are useful for assessing the condition of the existing assets, evaluating the extent to which the infrastructure meets current demand, assessing whether infrastructure is likely to be able to meet demand in the future and benchmarking – to compare infrastructure availability in one country with other countries. For assessing the existing assets and generating meaningful information, the infrastructure statistics can be classified into five broad categories: • Accessibility indicators measuring the availability of infrastructure over geographic area and as proportion of population; • Quality indicators, i.e. whether the available infrastructure is of use or not; © OECD/ITF 2013 29
UNDERSTANDING THE VALUE OF TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE • Fiscal costs and revenue indicators, including budget outlay, expenditure, investments and revenues generated; • Utilization indicators measuring whether the infrastructure is being utilized to its full capacity or not; and • Affordability indicators showing whether the infrastructure can be afforded by users. These types of indicators are specifically useful for benchmarking: to compare infrastructure availability and performance internationally. Despite the potential value, there is a lack of cross-country comparisons of outputs, inputs and efficiency. As a recent OECD study on the performance of road transport infrastructure points out, this may partly reflect the lack of analytical or empirical framework but, more importantly, significant problems relating to data availability, coverage, quality and comparability (Braconier et al., 2013). Benchmarks for the transport sector and infrastructure performance are hampered by a complete lack of data on some dimensions (e.g. connectivity), partial coverage (e.g. travel time) or limited comparability (investment and maintenance). The following sections will discuss macroeconomic research and the use of data on transport infrastructure for benchmarking. Few examples are also shown to illustrate the possible policy use. 3.2 Macroeconomic research Transport infrastructure assets and networks have very special economic characteristics. They are associated with multiple market failures, including public good characteristics and externalities (both positive and negative). Transport infrastructure assets tend to be costly to construct but relatively cheap to operate and maintain, giving them characteristics of natural monopolies. The assets are specific, long-lived and generate benefits for users over long time periods. The economy-wide benefits of such assets depend on how well they have been combined into networks. For example, a sparse network connecting critical hubs may be more efficient than a dense network with key missing links. Countries spend considerable amounts of money each year to maintain and improve their transport infrastructure in response to growing passenger and freight mobility needs. Given the level of funding requirements and budgetary constraints, it is important for decision-makers to understand the relationship between these expenditures and policy objectives. Decision-makers need reliable information and appropriate analytical tools to prioritize projects according to the benefits they provide. The same is true for the costs of operation, maintenance and reconstruction during service life, which tends to follow the costs of constructing a new infrastructure. The direct impact – or productivity – of investment in transport infrastructure has been the subject of a body of empirical literature over the past decades. In this context “productivity” simply refers to the relationship between transport infrastructure and some measure of income/growth/wealth or welfare, most often measured as Gross Domestic Product or value added at the appropriate level of aggregation. Considering transport 30 © OECD/ITF 2013
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