» Home        Gateways, corridors and competitiveness: An evaluation of trans-European networks and lessons for Canada Prof. Roger Vickerman, University of Kent, UK Abstract The development of transport infrastructure as a means of enhancing both national and regional competitiveness has a long, but not always convincing, history. Its use in the European Union as an explicit agent of policy dates back to the early 1990s when it became enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty. The policy to develop a series of Trans-European Networks (TENs) which would cover all the main modes of inland transport, but also include the major gateways of seaports, inland ports and airports, was later extended to include short-sea shipping through the so-called Motorways of the Sea. In addition the proposed extension of the EU required that the networks be developed to embrace both the candidate countries and a number of neighbouring countries. The claim was made that the development of such a pan-European set of networks would enhance both overall competitiveness by reducing the costs of transport within the EU enabling greater integration of the European economy and its cohesion by educing national and regional disparities arising through inequalities in infrastructure provision and transport quality. In this paper the basis of these claims will be reviewed from a conceptual and theoretical perspective in the light of the evidence of the development of the TENs. The theoretical development will outline the nature of the wider economic effects of infrastructure, but the particular issues which arise here are the way in which these benefits arise in the development of corridors and networks. This raises key questions of the nature of agglomeration economies and the balance between core and peripheral regions. This evidence will be drawn from a number of studies of the impact of the TENs. The key issues which arise are the balance between the local, regional and national impacts and the wider European impact of the networks, the extent to which the TENs lead to concentration rather than cohesion, and the slow progress in the development of the TENs given the costs involved (€600 billion) and the general failure to harness the private sector funding seen as essential. The progress of the development of the networks will be summarised and lessons drawn for the development of other large-scale network developments and in particular the potential role of Asian-Pacific Corridors for Canada. One of the critical issues to emerge is the problems which arise when decisions on investment are in the control of lower level jurisdictions, but the main benefits depend on network effects which can only be raised at a higher level. Thus the economic appraisal of corridor development is critically dependent on the structure of decision-making. « Back to Abstracts  ©2007 Center for Transportation Studies, UBC. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy