ABSTRACT
Transport conveys many benefits. It allows personal mobility for both work and leisure activities. People in most industrialized countries now have a much wider choice of where they can live in relation to their employment than they enjoyed in the past. They also have access to a much wider and more diverse range of leisure pursuits - a fact of no small consequence as more time is given over to non-work activities. Transport, perhaps in some ways more importantly, also provides a vital lubricant to trade and has permitted the advantages of geographical specialization in production to be more fully exploited. It is no accident that, as the post-socialist countries of Eastern Europe seek to develop their out-of-date industrial bases and to expand their trade with the West, one of their priorities is the modernization of their transport systems. Here the problem is not so much one of the quantity of the existing transport systems - many of these countries have extensive rail and road networks - but rather the quality of the infrastructure (Button, 1991).
