ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to examine the role that transport policy may play in aiding and directing economic development. Transport has long been linked with the process of economic development, be it at the national or local level. Economists have also increasingly moved away from the idea that one should treat transport and development in aggregate terms and have separated the impacts of transport policies on specific industrial developments from that on economic growth per se. From a political and administrative point of view then, links between transport infrastructure and spatial policy have been central to the operation of a significant part of the European Community’s budgetary process. Improved international transport has been one of the factors leading to the growth of economic unions and free market areas of one kind or another. Transport schemes normally fit very conveniently within the criteria set down in Brussels.
