ABSTRACT
Countries across the globe routinely invest massive resources in transportation infrastructure in the form of new facilities, expansion of existing ones, or maintenance and repair of the network in place. What is common to all of these investments is that they are products of public sector decision making at the local, regional, national, and, at times, international level. Despite their strong technical and economic dimensions, transportation investments represent partial political statements regarding objectives, funding priorities, and targeted service recipients. Viewed from this perspective, transportation investments are similar to other public sector projects. Given this reality, the key questions that this book sets out to explore are normative in nature: What should the objectives and purposes of transportation investments cover? What should their scope be relative to population and space? How should they be analyzed in terms of available analytical tools and the attendant decision making?
