Strategic Road Network Development
Key to the success of economic development initiatives in any country or region is the establishment, maintenance, and continued refinement of an appropriate road network (Knox and Marston, 508). Such networks, which link the core of a region or country to the rings of development leading to the periphery, are essential elements in moving people, products, and services from one location to another; these systems, beginning in man's earliest recorded history, have typically been created to facilitate the flow of traffic and to enhance communication linkages between distant locations. As geographers such as Paul Knox and Sallie Marston (508) have commented, the contemporary geophysical landscape is being changed dramatically as new technologies and road system design parameters or strategies are emerging. As significantly, in the case of developing nations or countries experiencing new population growth and the creation of centers of commerce and human activity beyond the traditional population core, creating a national strategy for sequential development of a comprehensive road network capable of meeting present and future needs is an economic imperative.
The purpose of this research project is to first examine the theoretical underpinning of road network development strategy and then to move to an explication of the rationale for such a strategy as an integral part of the national policymaking and development agenda. A discussion of such issues as economic nodes and their impact upon road construction, public transport corridors, effective road management and utilization issues, and the description of a template that can be used to guide strategic road network planning will be provided. Drawing upon the literature, and including a mini-case study of the efforts undertaken in the United States in the 1950s to create a national highway infrastructure as well as elements of the efforts bei...