Bougromenko V. Economic equivalents of road accessibility: the case study of Russian’s regions.

The Role of Transportation in Economic Development Proceedings of 1996 ITF Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting. Vol IV. Taiwan: p.289-293

 

 

Traditional criteria’s of transport availability insufficiently reflects real role of communications in economic and social development . Significant figures of final consumption of transportation services are needed to show ,how roads changes environment, quality of life and activity, such as: Integral Transport Accessibility (ITA)-from given point to all points, in hours; level of transport discrimination of population; reliability of investments to transport communications per 1 million $; economic effect from improving of ITA per hour in a region ( pure impact of roads on costs of various goods).

As result of analysis ,based on system approach “local changes- global response”, comparable estimations of indicators, listed above, were defined for 86 regions of Russia ,in accordance with order of Transport Ministry of Russia .This task was solved with “Geogracom 3W” expert system, which make it possible to evaluate the reliability of transport network operating and generate road investment programs.

With the help of the "Geogracom-3W" one can carry out the following certain tasks:

1 to make accurate not contradicting estimation of the existing or perspective transport provision level of a given region taking into consideration auto, railway, air and water (sea and river) communications, that is impossible to do using traditional "density" indices of Engel coefficient type.

2 to form alternative (on the basis of different criteria) investment programs, to substantiate reconstruction or new building priority of the separate UTN sections and bridges from the point of view of territory interests in indices important for a transport services consumer.

3 to evaluate negative consequences including national economy damage in "emergency" situations in case of separate parts of network failure and in this way to predict extraordinary situations.

4 to define system (regional) response to each project decisions, to take into consideration lack of coincidence of investments place and their effect resulting from economic activity transfer.

5 to take into consideration contradicting interests from the investments into the transport of different hierarchy territories (for example oblast and countryside administrative region) and to eliminate these contradictions.

The expert system of "Geogracom-3W" is a conversational system of making decision on road network development pointing out the priority and the terms of payback, economic and social effects. Besides the offers cover the following aimed tasks:

- raise of technical reliability and traffic capacities of highways, also by means of by-pass roads building around the populated areas.

- configuration improvement and raise of network reserve by means of building new sections and reconstruction of stand by ones.

- accessibility improvement of outlying populated areas by means of building and reconstruction of local and in-economic roads, fulfilling common use function;

- network reliability increase by means of reserve section building or reconstruction of already existing sections and artificial structures in case of failure of which the region will have considerable damage.