Traditional development-related transportation planning starts from the assumptions that lower rural transport costs will promote agricultural production and that the surplus produced by agriculture will encourage the development of domestic industry. Increases in national income associated with this kind of development then allow improvements in education and health. In contrast to traditional transportation planning, which is based on economic cost-benefit analyses, access-based transportation planning focuses on the direct social impacts of transportation investment on access to educational, health, and other social facilities. This doctoral dissertation improvement award will support research assessing whether transportation planning based explicitly on social rather than on economic criteria will sigificantly improve personal access to social facilities in rural areas. The study will focus on Cote d'Ivoire, a nation with accurate, detailed, and complete records. Operational measures of accessibility will be developed and validated and a model of access planning will be tested to determine how rural access to services has changed in recent decades and how resources could have been used to maximize accessibility. The increased understanding of the nature of a theory of transportation and development depends on this kind of study, which will focus on the specific social impacts of spatial and structural variations in roads and facilities. By studying the importance of social aspects of transportation planning, this research will contribute to understanding of basic development processes. This project also will provide an excellent opportunity for a promising young scholar to continue to develop independent research skills.
