Road Policy in Russia and CIS: novel management technologies for region sustainability

Strategy of sustainable development of roads

Problems of transitional period ideology affected the road and transport policy that is being implemented in the countries of the former USSR. It is manifested in delayed understanding of the concept of sustainable development and in thinly veiled cliches of centralized planned economy, that burden the road and transport policy. As a result, the concept of transport policy [1] approved by the government of the Russian Federation in 1997 does not work.

Russia's Roads program, that later became Presidential [2], was the first attempt to take into account the experience of developed countries, but after seven years of its realization it has become outdated.

A more fundamental approach to formation of road and transport policy was made in Kazakhstan where the Strategy of development up to 2030 was adopted in 1997. Within it an adequate attention was paid to road problems [3].

Interesting attempts to reform their road policies were made in Japan, Great Britain, New Zealand and the Scandinavian countries [4,5].

In our opinion, road policy as a document must give an answer to one question: how to achieve the indices of sustainable development of a country by means of roads.

Goals of road network development should correspond to goals of the territorial development strategy, particularly to that of achievement of human development standards and economic development indices (for example, in Kazakhstan this goal is provide GDP per capita not less than US$ 7000 by 2030). Besides, the realization of the above-mentioned goals should be performed in conformity with extended principles of sustainable (ecological, economical, social and geopolitical) development. The essence of the principle is in such use of various resources that would allow us to extensively exploit the resources today and at the same time to increase potential opportunities of development of future generations.

As applied to the roads, it implies such a development of road infrastructure that not only maintains mobility of population and goods (even despite the accumulated under-rehabilitation) but also broadens these opportunities due to increase of the potential of the so-called secondary qualities of a territory, such as accessibility, connectedness, contrast (diversity) of locations. The role of roads in realization of potential opportunities for transportation of consumers of different territorial resources is especially significant as compared with the other transport modes (since roads reach even the smallest settlements).

Nevertheless, these specific opportunities can become available only under two conditions:

- planning of the road development in accordance with the end consumption of services that lie beyond their production needs or beyond the needs of transport service providers. Road network development is not an end in itself but an instrument for achievement of the sustainable development parameters that are reflected in Minimal Transport (Road) Standard:

- financing that is ahead of current needs.

Minimal Transport Standard

For these ends MTS should be adopted as the state standard.

MTS is a combination of purpose indices of end transport services consumption, expressed in a comparable form. The set of these indices gives orientations for sustainable development in the area that depends on transport. There is no place here for branch (industrial) indices like net cost of cargo, volume of roads commissioning, power supply, needs in bitumen, cement, etc. Only generalized indices are presented. They depend on the results of transport functioning, and, therefore, they are of interest to the consumer presented by the state or regional government. 

Spectrum of numerical values of the indices is defined by the following territorial peculiarities of the region:

A -  present level of region development; 

B - potential of regional development (e.g. total prospected for reserves of power timber, mineral resources);

С - dimensions of economically developed (inhabited) territory.

In general, MTS should reflect the orientations of society to values, which could be achieved in long term outlook (10-15 years) with due regard to economical, social, political, ethnic and other peculiarity of region. MTS gives level of state opportunities realized in consecutive order: value of indices currently characteristic of the most developed countries ® typical MTS values, achievable under the present level of technological innovation ® total diversion from typical value specifying peculiarities of Kazakhstan and reflected through selection of priority of A, B, C indicators ® actual value of MTS indicators. As can be seen from the Table 1., almost all indicators are not sufficient which means that state support is required to bring it to a desired level. However, the state could make this task much easier by lowering its demands to transport surroundings (although in this case the state must acknowledge itself either a developing or poor country). In our opinion, numerical values of MTS indices reflect real opportunities and potentials of Kazakhstan for the nearest 20 - 25 years. Having declared MTS as an official document and having made it the basis of state transport policy, Kazakhstan set an encouraging example to other countries including Russia.

The proposed set of indices is not strictly determined. It could be added to or scaled down, however, in any case indices must correspond to all the above-mentioned demands of transport standards. On the other hand, the index of the level of muscular transport modes development is exotic, though it reflects a world-wide ecological tendency (for example, in the Netherlands 34% of all suburban and urban passenger transportation is carried out by bicycles).

Analogous minimal transport standards also exist for the regions. Non- coincidence of these values is an objective pre-requisition for demarcation between regional and republican interests (including financial interests). General economical and geopolitical interests are of priority.

Principle of financing that is ahead of current needs

- subsidies for performance of social and ecological functions;

- awareness of the an acute nature of road problems and of non-identical development of regions;

- re-distribution of a part of the income received from state transit functions (external transport activity) in favor of internal problems of transport development.

In most of the regions all transport modes, excluding water transport, are considered to reach break-even. Objective criterion of state support as well as of its volumes should be GDP – transport balances of each branch, that clearly reflect what precisely each transport mode contributes to GDP through economic activity of separate sub-branches of the economy in a certain region as compared with state expenditure (% from GDP). State support is advisable as long as increase of expenditure for development of transport modes does not exceed revenues (or does not decrease "assets" – see Table 2.).

For example, it will be incumbent on National Statistic Agency in Kazakhstan to monitor GDP balances as the most important instrument of the state financial strategy, as well as to correct annual assignments of the Ministry of Transport and Communications. Simultaneously tax policy reflecting objective economic changes in the country should be corrected as well.

It is known that social and partly ecological aspects can not reach break-even. That is why the state should encourage the transport complex to fulfill tasks of social and environmental development. 

 Kazakhstan and Russia demonstrate an unacceptable for civilized countries level of transport discrimination of the population and, as a result, varying (unjust) living conditions in different parts of the country, region, and even rural administrative areas. This problem concerns not only transport provision for regular needs (retail trade, education, public health, post service), but also occasional ones (household equipment repair, specialized medical help, pension service). Table 3. shows the level of transport discrimination of population in some regions of Russia and Kazakhstan as for the provision of the second type needs. The problem of reduction of the transport discrimination appears to be the most important state issue from the point of view of genuine democracy and end goals of sustainable development.

Conclusions

The new approach to road policy would not be possible without state-of-the-art management technologies, based on the expert system. 

The investment programs oriented towards achievement of region sustainability goals are generated by means of advanced informational technologies (Geogracom 5W expert system).

The main functional modules of Geogracom 5W expert system are:

- determination of strategic planning period and parameters of strategic development of a country or a region (see Fig. 1 – interface fragment) and calculation of MTS;

- evaluation of current transport and road surroundings created by all transport modes and motor roads taken separately;

- diagnosis of bottlenecks in road development;

- automatic generation of proposals on transport network development, aiming for achievement of MTS indices;

- creation of alternative (on various criteria) investment programs for roads on the basis of generated proposals with due attention to external profitability of the project;

- elaboration of financial scenarios for realization of the selected investment programs and modification of the tax system.

Thus, Geogracom 5W expert system gives the opportunity to perform a full cycle of feasibility study for network infrastructure project (and not only for a single road).

References

1. State Transport Policy of the Russian Federation. Concept. – Moscow, 1997 (in Russian)

2. Russia's Roads Program (in Russian)

3. National Transport Model of Kazakhstan. 30 p. – Moscow, 1998. 

4. Development and Implementation Strategy. Phase 1. Foundations 157p.; Phase 2. Definition of Road Transport Measures, 161p. – Ministry of Transport of New Zealand

5. A new deal for transport: Better for everyone. The Government's White Paper on the Future of Transport. – London: 1998, 170p.

6. Bougromenko V. Depending local interests in project management: from team to decision making level. // Int. Journal of Proj. Management. Vol.17, №17, p.131-135, 1999

Table 1.

Minimal Transport Standard of Kazakhstan

Table 2. Economic contribution of roads to Kazakhstan's GDP

Table 3. Level of transport discrimination of population