Spatial economic impacts of transport infrastructure supply

This paper contains a survey of studies on the spatial economic impacts of transport infrastructure supply. A theoretical framework is developed where impacts of transport infrastructure on spatial economic development are measured in terms of productivity changes and (re)location behaviour. The transmission takes place via changes in generalized transport costs and accessibility. Methods for analyzing transport infrastructure impacts are classified according to the level of aggregation of the data (aggregate versus disaggregate) and the degree of model use (modelling versus nonmodelling approaches). Two spatial levels are distinguished: intra-urban versus intraregional. At the intraregional level it is found that integrated land use-transport models usually yield infrastructure impacts of limited size. Much larger impacts are usually found when entrepreneurs are directly interviewed about these impacts as they perceive them. At the interregional level, production function approaches usually lead to the conclusion that infrastructure supply has a considerable impact on the productivity of other production factors. On the other hand, the relocation impacts of transport infrastructure on economic activity as predicted by multiregional models are usually limited.