ABSTRACT
The apparently poor general response of road investment decision-makers to considerations of income distribution and poverty alleviation appears to be related to the comparatively emergence of the latter as dominant development issues. There is no evidence that road programmes have ever been consciously used to favour areas where stratification appears to be declining. Some other conditions must also be met before general benefits from the provision of rural roads can be reaped. Botswana, Egypt, India and Thailand appears to effect significant proportions of their rural road investment programmes without the use of formal cost-benefit analysis. One of the most robust results to emerge from the impact studies is that the most likely form of traffic on a new road relates to transport of people rather than goods. The differing results of impact studies appear to relate as much to the methods of study as to genuine differences in the reaction of rural societies to new roads and road improvements.
