Chapter 18: Transportation in Sparsely Populated Regions

Transportation planning and policymaking is highly dependent on the density of population and economic activity. While excessive congestion is a primary problem to be handled by policymaking in dense regions, inefficient use of capacity is the central problem of the sparsely populated regions. The mirror image of excess capacity is the problem of financing investments and reinvestments in the roads, railroads, and airports of these regions. Taxation of fuels and other charges related to the use of transport equipment as a means of covering infrastructural costs tend to reinforce the problem of excess capacity.

One of the central problems of the sparsely populated regions is the combination of economies of scale and low accessibility levels almost everywhere. The consequence of this combination is monopolistic pricing of transportation services as well as of other consumer and producer services. Improvement of the transport and communication systems in such regions can lead to changes in the market form, a consequence rarely taken into account in the cost–benefit studies of transportation investments.