Territorial Review Copenhagen - Region Hovedstaden

257
indicators such as GDP per capita. However, this correlation may merely
reflect historical agglomeration processes rather than causal relationships
effective today. Attempts to explain changes in economic indicators, i.e.
economic growth and decline, by transport investment or differences in
accessibility has been much less successful. In countries with an already
highly developed transport infrastructure, accessibility tends to become
ubiquitous and further infrastructure improvements may bring only marginal
benefits. Transport improvements have strong impacts on regional
development only when they result in removing a bottleneck.
What really matters to private firms are the (generalised) transport costs
they will face. Infrastructure is thus only important as a means to achieve
this. Improved infrastructure that creates more capacity, higher speeds,
better quality and more reliable transport, will be reflected in firms‘ total
costs, not just in terms of the direct costs of transport, but also the indirect
costs of storage and inventories, the number of depots, etc.
Any public finance required for infrastructure puts an additional fiscal
burden on the regional economy that could retard economic development.
Although evidence from macroeconomic models has suggested that
productivity and growth enhancing effects of infrastructure tend to outweigh
the crowding effects of finance, at a regional level this is more complex.
Within a region, the impacts of construction have to be taken more carefully
into account, since there are likely to be larger leakages and smaller local
multiplier effects. The smaller a region, the greater the relative net benefit to
non-residents, since there will be more non-resident users and a smaller
proportion of users will bear the costs, unless the full cost is charged to users
(Vickerman et al., 1999).
Connectivity refers to the ability of local firms to develop profitable
market relationships with firms or consumers in other regions. A high level
of connectivity provides for strong inter-regional linkages with external
firms and customers, whereas a lack of connectivity due to insufficient
transportation infrastructure implies a lack of choice, innovation and
intellectual opportunities for the development of such geographical linkages.
Capacity and network changes within the airline system can play a crucial
role in changing the relative attractiveness of a region for a variety of
industrial sectors, by changing the time taken for face-to-face transactions to
be completed across large spatial distances. Indeed, evidence from the
United States suggests that a one-day round trip is the crucial spatial extent
for many types of information exchanges within much of the semiconductor
industry (Arita and McCann, 2000).
As an input factor of production, the value of transportation
infrastructure can vary significantly from sector to sector and firm to firm.