Research 350 - NZ Transport Agency

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT BENEFITS OF TRANSPORT INVESTMENT
– Lane et al (1998) focused on the ‘environmental justice’ aspects of proposed
highway bypass alternatives in North Carolina, USA. Their ‘environmental justice’
approach emphasised reflecting the values of the local community. Thus, they
sought community input on the bypasses through project development
meetings in order to hear concerns and to describe how these could be
mitigated 31 . Potentially disproportionate impacts on socio-economic groups
residing near the proposed bypasses were considered by use of a reference
population. Survey work was undertaken to determine the race, numbers and
income levels of those likely to be displaced by the bypass alternatives. However
neither of the alternatives was judged to have a disproportionate impact on
minorities based on a range of environmental and community service factors.
– Forkenbrock and Schweitzer (1999) analysed the spatial occurrences of air
pollution and noise associated with changes to an existing arterial road. The
focus was on the impact of these factors on low-income and minority groups. It
was found that low income households were not disproportionately affected by
noise, however minority households were.
4.5 Conclusions and recommendations
This chapter posed the following questions:
Question 4.1: Is the upgrading of transport links within or to/from a particular
(‘disadvantaged’) region likely to be an effective means of enhancing the economic
development of that region, and in what circumstances?
• As is the case for national development, transport is, in general, a necessary but not
sufficient condition for regional development. There is a need for other supporting
programs and infrastructure to be in place, in addition to other natural and human
resources. Various commentators have emphasized this point, including ECTM, which
concluded that:
regional development…clearly does not depend solely on investment in transport.
The causal link between the two is, in fact, weak. Curves showing the link between
investment in transport infrastructure and economic growth quickly level off once a
certain threshold has been reached…the overriding opinion of the experts at the
Round Table was nonetheless to the effect that improvements in transport systems
did not induce specific effects capable of systematically increasing the production of
a region.
(ECTM 2001, p. 4)
• Further, experience offers no conclusive guidance regarding the distributional impact
of transport investment on specific regional economies. Issues such as the ‘two way
road problem’, the need for supporting measures, well developed transport networks
31 Note however that BTE warns against the use of local community consultation in the (similar) context
of setting MCA weights. For example local interests may favour local traffic over through traffic, with
results which are likely to be sub-optimal from a national decision-making perspective (BTE 1999, p.
198). Of course, consideration of such effects may be more defensible if they are considered in addition
to formal SCBA results -i.e. ‘below the line’.
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