2004 Report on Infrastructure in Central Asia and Azerbaijan

My IR class this term is focused on Central Asia which means that I get to work on some of my research and get a term paper out of it. Since I'm writing my research proposal for the term over the weekend I've been looking at infrastructure reports in the region. I found an NBR Analysis on Infrastructure Challenges in Central Asia and Azerbaijan . Seems like a solid piece of research to include into my paper/literature review.

In my other class I've been working on Urban Politics, which is not quite in the scope of this blog. However, some interesting points about infrastructure and utilites have been made. I might post the one page summaries that we are assigned of the different books since most of them deal tangently with infrastructure or political economy.

The Spatial Political Economy of Urban Infrastructure Transformation by Roar Samuelsen

I found this paper while searching for something completely unrelated. It is on the political economy of infrastructure in a more urban setting.

The second aspect of urban infrastructure to be pointed out is that they are fixed supports for the time-space mobilities of capitalism. This means that they are the fixed part of capital, immobilized and spatially configured in order to facilitate greater movement of capital, commodities, information, labour, money and services.

Full Article Here

The paper as a whole is a little technical and deals with more urban areas, but I thought it was relevant to the discussion of what infrastructure is and its role in a capitalistic society.

Haiti Earthquake

So if you haven't heard about the earthquate in Haiti you're probably not reading this blog. NYT ran a piece today about how there is aid but it can't be distributed effectively due to infrastructure issues and communication system failures.

Everything thinks about infrastructure (roads/trains) in natural disasters because they are usually broken down in the events. What I think gets missed is that bad infrastructure planning, development, and funding is a huge issue daily for some nations.

Here's hoping the disaster in Haiti is being handled efficiently and with enough humanitarian aid and forces.

Other Projects

Things have been slow in the CIS project world with the UN being focused on climate change. A couple of projects outside of my thesis area that were approved for new or additional funding: Yemen and Sri Lanka.

Hopefully with some additional time I can start on the meat of my thesis- data coding.

Confronting “Death on Wheels” // Chapter 8 : The Task Ahead: Operationalizing an Effective Response in ECA

- Commitments to sustainable, safe, and affordable transportation for development should be prioritized.

- Partnerships and knowledge sharing will be key to fostering the best results in ECA. This includes collaboration between local and state governments and international agencies.

- That concludes the paper, which is okay in parts but mostly feels like beating a dead horse. Maybe it’s just because it’s Thursday that I feel this way.

Full Report

Confronting “Death on Wheels” // Chapter 7: Priorities for Intersectoral Work on Road Safety in ECA

- This chapter addresses the question of how to implement the 2004 World Bank Report on road safety. Mostly recommends a lead agency, international cooperation, more human and physical resources, and more money. There are some more details for how this can happen according to the recommendation.

- Increased seatbelt use and increased awareness of young drivers and pedestrians can help decrease a significant amount of fatal accidents.

- Demonstration projects should be designed in order to help support these types of projects and to provide benchmarks.

Full Report

Confronting “Death on Wheels” // Chapter 6: World Bank Support for Road Safety Improvements in ECA and in Other Regions

- There are a decent amount of transportation and infrastructure projects that are being funded by the World Bank in the ECA. These are mostly geared toward road safety solutions such as repaving and extensions.

- Transparency of the grantee government comes into question frequently with these funds. More oversight is needed and more regulation.
Better data collection is needed; this can be done with betting monitoring and oversight, but requires financial resources and coordination of state and local agencies within the nation.

- A culture of road and pedestrian safety should be fostered in the nations. Target drunk driving, build safer roads, and support safe use of transportation infrastructure.

Full Report

Confronting “Death on Wheels” // Chapter 5: Road Safety Approaches and Policies

- More investment and policy should be put towards road safety and prevention of accidents. Being able to build safe roads and promote legislation that allows for laws and enforcement are some of the best ways to increase safety.

- This chapter talks about the different organizations and groups that deal with this issue, and about institutional arrangements at the country level.

Full Report

Confronting “Death on Wheels” // Chapter 4: The Role of Health Systems in Preventing RTIs and Helping Victims

- A good health system can help reduce fatal accidents.

- The data available on road accidents is incomplete and under reported.

** I don’t really know why they included this chapter. Obviously the intent of a solid primary care system is to reduce fatalities and disabilities. There’s some recommendations, but this is really a health care policy discussion which is intertwined with roads, but can be separate and apart.

Full Report

Confronting “Death on Wheels” // Chapter 3: Interventions and Results: What is the Evidence?

- Good road/intersection design, signage and safety features such as passing lanes are used frequently in high income nations and should be used more in developing countries.

- Seatbelts and other vehicle design requirements are a good way to reduce fatal injuries (average 11% according to the report).

- Education and legislation are only effective if enforced correctly and
consistently. Drunk driving is also apparently a huge issue. A few pages in the chapter read like they’re written by MADD. Side note, they are the reason that the legal drinking age in the US is 21. In order for states to get their federal highway funding, MADD lobbied that they had to increase the age to 21. Great reason for a law, right? More Information.

- Russia has been trying to deal with the issue of road safety however their infrastructure is decaying and is a large obstacle to road safety improvement.

Full Report

Confronting “Death on Wheels”: Making Roads Safe in Europe and Central Asia // Chapter 2: The Epidemic of Road Traffic Injuries

- RTI’s are growing, however this growth is in line with the spread of other diseases in developing nations. Passengers, pedestrians, and cyclists are the most in danger. This sounds more like a growing metropolitan issue.

- The World Bank and WHO predict that there will be an increase in RTI’s over the next twenty years.

- A considerable amount of these deaths are due to poor road condition and other infrastructure issues. In the CIS there are about three times as many RTI’s than the EU.

- Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation lead the RTI death rates in Who-Euro member nations in 2007 statistics. In later data, most of these deaths look like pedestrian and four-wheeled vehicles. Also, children and young adults die more frequently.
The report goes into some economic calculations on these deaths and tries to factor in other cost factors.

** Honestly I’m not finding this report that shocking. Children and young adults die more because they are not as hardy physically and some young adults may be behind the wheel themselves. Maybe I’m biased because I’ve lived in both types of US cities, one being very car oriented (Los Angeles, CA) and one being very pedestrian/light rail oriented (Portland, OR). I’ve almost been hit by cars walking and driving countless times due to various issues some infrastructure, some driver training, some my fault. I’ll contain the rest of my opinion until I finish the whole report.

report link

Confronting “Death on Wheels”: Making Roads Safe in Europe and Central Asia

This World Bank report is focused on how to improve road safety in the CIS and other developing regions. It is essentially a reminder for a 2004 report by a similar title that came to the conclusion that more funding was needed to improve infrastructure and vehicle and operator regulations. The following posts on this will be the usual chapter breakdowns that have been done for prior reports:

Chapter 1: Introduction

- Transportation sector is highly impacted by spending and decisions of most of the other sectors, especially in terms of planning and zoning.

- Road and noise pollution are serious environmental impacts and contribute to the high external cost of car transportation.

- Road Traffic Injuries (RTI)’s are defined in the report as any death occurring due to a traffic incident within 30 days. There is an increasing risk for RTI’s in developing nations due to a lack of regulation and continual funding infrastructure capacity/maintenance.

- Road safety should be an integral piece in transportation policy, which also includes pedestrian alternatives to car transportation.

- “The Commission for Global Road Safety (200) also notes that while the primary rationale for investing more than US$4 billion each year in road infrastructure is to improve road transport efficiency to spur economic growth, the risk and magnitude of increased societal costs associated with rising RTIs is often overlooked”

- This report was primarily written for an internal audience and to raise awareness of how other sectors can influence transportation.

report link

IEG Report: Annual Review of Development Effectiveness, Part II

Part II: Achieving Sustainable Development

This is the second part of the IEG: Annual Review of Development Effectiveness for the World Bank. Here are the main points from the report, which is focused on sustainable development in the second half:

- The World Bank ahs a critical role to play in assisting nations in addressing environmental challenges and promoting sustainable practices.

- Sustainable development, poverty reduction, and economic growth are not mutually exclusive.

-The World Bank has evolved over the years with how they handle environmental issues, but need to do more promoting sustainable development for poverty reduction.

- Environmental issues are also quality of life issues

- The process of “mainstreaming” environmental sustainability for development projects and projects in other sectors is not as good as hoped, it is up to The Bank to lead the way and encourage better/smarter practices.

- Most of the funding for sustainable development is going into Africa.

- Bank awareness of biodiversity and other environmental issues is pretty good, and there’s been a large increase in funding for these types of projects in the last decade.

- Global and international environmental policies and sustainable development practices need to be developed.

I see the validity in encouraging sustainable development. On a note outside the report, I do want to point out that building roads isn’t necessarily an unsustainable practice. There has been a large push to mass transit in the west as an effective way of moving people, but in many emerging economies pollution issues have more to do with industry and factories than building roads. Steel for rail has to come from some rendering process, and even solar panels require a lot of chemicals. No one really considers what to do with unused sustainable energy products since that hasn’t become an issue yet, but what’s going to happen when the solar panels in the farms need to be replaced? Can they be reused or are we creating waste that is more difficult to deal with? Roads require maintenance, but so does all types of infrastructure. Traffic impacts and pollution from cars is another regulatory mechanism completely.

NEWS: IDA Funds for Roads in Kyrgz Republic

"WASHINGTON, November 3, 2009 - The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors today approved the following project:

Kyrgyz Republic: National Road Rehabilitation Project

IDA Credit: US$13.75 million equivalent
Terms: Maturity = 40 years; Grace Period = 10 years
IDA Grant: US$11.25 million equivalent
Project ID: P107608

Project Description: The National Road Rehabilitation (Osh-Isfana) Project for the Kyrgyz Republic aims to contribute to the reduction of transport costs and travel time along the Osh-Batken-Isfana road corridor; and to improve road safety planning. There are three components to the project: 1) rehabilitation of a section of the Osh-Batken-Isfana road corridor; 2) road safety planning improvement; and 3) project management and implementation."
More Information/Source

Finally a new project! This is part of the National Road Rehabilitation Project and is supposed to build approximately 30 km of new roads in addition to fixing some other ones. It's also expected to provide a positive impact for 18% of the population. The report documents associated with the project explain that 60% of the roads are gravel or unpaved which is a large problem for the effectiveness and upkeep of transportation infrastructure.

World Bank: ECA 20 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Lots of publications coming out of the World Bank this week on ECA (Europe and Central Asia) which includes memberstates of the CIS too. The summary of the report on 20 years after the fall is linked here.

It looks like a pretty mixed bag of successes and failures, but transportation infrastrucre seems to have improved. In general, World Bank project ratings have improved. These ratings are from the report linked earlier today from the IEG.

Here's an interesting footnote though on how countries are classified:

The International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook (October 2009) projects GDP in Centraland Eastern Europe and in the Commonwealth of Independent States (the former Soviet Union excluding the Baltic States) to contract by 5 percent and 6.7 percent, respectively, in 2009. In this book, Central and Eastern Europe comprises Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, FYR Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania,
Serbia, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia. Turkey is part of the World Bank’s ECA region but is not a transition country; thus, it is added selectively to the discussion. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova,
the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Georgia is not part of the CIS but is included in the group because its economy shares many features of the other countries.

Looks like I'll have to add the IMF's outlook from last month to my reading list.

Data on Current Transportation Infrastructure

* Includes water and land. (All provided data is from the CIA World Fact Book, 2009.)

The table above shows the difference that exists today within the CIS as related to the distribution of transportation infrastructure. Although the percentage of rail seems pretty consistent with the nations that also have natural gas and oil resources, the percentage of roads seems to have wider distribution, with the exception of Azerbaijan who has a historical oil industry. Russia’s low percentage of roads and rail is due to the vast majority of non-developable land and the break up of the USSR leading to much of the rail and industrialized cities being drawn into new boundaries for newly emerging CIS nations.

The percentage of the gross area of the countries covered by roads was higher than expected, but the actual effectiveness of these roads could be debatable depending on linkages, communities, and funding for maintenance. In order to determine the actual effectiveness of the road, in-depth case studies should be considered, comparing the population size in the rural and urban areas in comparison to the roads that service the areas and connect to social and economic necessities.

CIS: Transportation Infrastructure

Most of the transportation infrastructure in the region is rail oriented, with a large variation between Russia and the CIS. During the era of the Soviet Union, most of the rail lines were built for the transit of goods only and were found in the more urban areas. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many of the smaller states that were created did not have the appropriate infrastructure in order to sustain economic growth. Road density in the CIS states in 1993 was approximately 35 km/100,000 of the population, far below the European Union at 100 km/100,000 of the population. (Aghion and Shankerman1999) The main problem with this ratio in the CIS is that although rail can be an effective means of transportation for manufactured goods out of the country, the internal distribution of goods and citizens suffers. Even with the extensive rail networks that were built under the Soviet Union, passenger rail and the development of roads was neglected.

At the end of the Second World War, the International Road Transport Union (IRU) was created in 1948 as a way to “find solutions to the problems affecting road transport…[and] work with government bodies to develop unified and simplified rules governing road transport, customs, and road safety” (IRU 2002). Although the IRU was created to deal with the rules and regulations of trucking goods across borders, after the Cold War the IRU took an interest in the potential of road transport in the newly created CIS. In 1998, the IRU established a Permanent Delegation to the CIS in Moscow, which aimed at promoting “the development of North-South and East-West transport corridors within the territory of the CIS, as a major contribution to the economic development of the entire Eurasian region” (IRU 2002).

How Effective is Transportation Infrastructure? A Literature Review

Although few studies have been done on the impact of infrastructure development in transition economics and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), many studies have been conducted to examine the cost-benefit relationships of building new roads, as well as the development of these networks within other transition economies. Studies have generally shown that there is a positive relationship between transit infrastructure and economic growth, as well as that infrastructure capital “increased industry and national productivity in the United States” (Aghion and Schankerman 1999: 82). The first of the studies being reviewed for the purposes of this paper is Philippe Aghion and Mark Schankerman’s article “Competition, entry and the social returns to infrastructure in transition economies”. The main argument of their study is that “the potential for developing competitive markets in transition economics has been inhibited by the inadequacy of both the institutional and physical infrastructure” (Aghion and Schankerman 1999). The authors continue to suggest that in order to assist success in transition economies that governments and multi-lateral aid agencies need to find a way to quantifiable measure the social returns from infrastructure projects and how these factors influence economic performance.

Although Aghion and Schankerman’s study also provides insight to the lack of development of government and telecommunications infrastructure in transition economies, their study centers on if and how transportation infrastructure helps promote market competition. Their paper finds that “indirect effects of infrastructure investment depend on features of the economic environment, including the number of firms in the market (initial density), the degree of cost asymmetry, the proportion of high cost firms, and the initial level of competition (or transaction costs)” (Aghion and Schankerman 1999: 98). Most of the demand for infrastructure, according to the authors, depends on the political economy, which has serious implications for the transition economies and governments of the CIS. If the political economy is one of the most important factors in the success of development from the building of infrastructure, than the historical evidence would seem to suggest that the more liberal the nation, the more successful transport infrastructure will be in facilitating economic and social growth.

Aghion and Schankerman’s model includes measures for government and telecommunications infrastructure as well as transportation. Overall their study shows that there is a relationship between developing infrastructure and economic growth and political liberalization. What is unclear is the distribution of winners and losers that the authors reference in terms of low-cost and high-cost firms. The authors also suggest that the research they created should be followed with a more in-depth analysis of political economy and how that essentially impacts the effectiveness of infrastructure in economic development.

Feinberg and Meurs’s paper “Market Report, Infrastructure and Exchange Rate Passthrough in Central and Eastern Europe” provides an alternative to Aghion and Schankerman’s argument that “physical infrastructure is crucial for competitive market development” (Feinger and Meurs 2005: 23). Feinber and Meurs found the infrastructure in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) inferior to the needs of the nations. They also point out that the World Bank and other international agencies have made infrastructure development a priority for project lending, but that the economic failures of the states that received many of these loans left the infrastructure in disrepair or insufficient for growth. (Feinberg and Meurs 2005)

In this study, Feinberg and Meurs analyze “13 broad industry sectors for the years 1991-200 for Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovenia with data…and (6) an index (constructed by the authors) of physical infrastructure in the five countries” (Feingber and Meurs 2005: 24). The results of the paper finds the impacts of physical infrastructure unclear but that “market reforms (improving the legal/institutional infrastructure) in Central and Eastern Europe have had the desired effect of increasing the integration of these countries’ economies into the global economic system, with gains in the competitiveness of domestic markets” (Feinberg and Meurs 2005: 29). Although the relationship between economic growth and the development of physical infrastructure was unclear, the data does suggest that the improvement of physical infrastructure may increase economic growth and capital movement. The authors of the study expected a stronger impact from infrastructure on economic development than what was shown in their results. Although the nation data used in the Feinberg and Meurs study does not include any member of the CIS, the shared history and economic performance of Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS is reasonable. Both studies discussed thus far have found some relationship between infrastructure and economic development. What is interesting is that both authors also account for other types of infrastructure, specifically in terms of government and social programs.

The final component to the literature review is a book by Rietveld and Bruinsma, Is Transport Infrastructure Effective?. The authors take a more economic and urban planning approach to the question, whereas the previous two articles were predominantly social science and economics oriented. Rietveld and Bruinsma discuss infrastructure as it relates to public funding and the impact of it on the delivery of social and economic goods. The financing of infrastructure, according to the authors tends to alternate between public and private financing, depending on the policies in vogue at the time. Overall, however, there has been a decline of funding from the public sector in the last twenty years, the authors cite many causes that may have influenced government spending, specifically the “changing opions about the role of the state in the economy and the society as a whole” in the 1980s (Rietvel and Bruinsma 1998). The authors also suggest the approach taken by Grubler and Nakiconovic in 1991, who found that there was a life-cycle to the funding of infrastructure by the public sector, in which the overlap became increasing smaller between the two. The cycles would include the canal cycle in the beginning of the 19th century, the railway cycle in the first half of the 19th century, the 20th century cycle of road and the current or to be occurring cycle of aviation and telecommunications. (Rietveld and Bruinsma) Although public funding for infrastructure types has seemed to pull away, a simple explanation seems to be that the initial costs and energy required to initially plan, develop, and build the infrastructure are highest and the residual maintenance of these projects makes the state seem less involved in infrastructure as a whole. In some cases, such as in Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the privatization of rail has also shifted the need for public capital for maintenance into private companies who run freight and passenger rail.

Rietveld and Bruinsma also discuss the issue of accessibility, specifically the ease of use, and the effectiveness of infrastructure. The authors do a fair job compiling other studies that have operationalized these concepts and proceed into a discussion of calculating transport costs. They argue, much like the previous two articles, “transport infrastructure investment lead to changes in generalized transport costs via shorter distances or higher speeds, which give rise to reductions in fuel, capital and labour costs” (Rietveld and Bruinsma 1998: 47). This decrease in transportation costs would, in theory, increase productivity, which will in turn lead to growth of gross domestic product (GDP). Development of infrastructure, specifically accessible and well-planned infrastructure can also positively impact property value, which is also a facilitator of investment and growth in developing and developed nations. For Rietveld and Bruinsma the “inequalities in accessibility are least pronounced in the road network…[however] in the rail network inequalities are clearly higher” (Reitveld and Bruinsma 1998: 139). The better accessibility for road networks are partially due to the actual cost of roads versus rail and also due to the ease of expanding and adding onto existing road networks, whereas expansion and changes in rail and create more problems and cost more. Also roads are more likely to be used for both economic and personal travel, whereas the differences between passenger and industrial rail are more challenging due to the different gauges in rail lines, locomotives, and the planning process differences between industrial and passenger rail.

While plans for roads that serve industrial and residential areas might differ in the amount of capacity and how the network as a whole will react to the new road or linkage, traffic planning models are widely used internationally by Western governments to determine how many lanes are necessary and where connections should be made based on user demand. Rail is harder to determine demand since passenger rail and industrial rail require specialized trains that are able to adapt to the different types of lines, and set schedules are not always able to meet demand, and sometimes can actually run at a higher cost since a train without product or passengers following the schedule might be necessary in order to make the next connection. The remainder of the book delves into comparisons of European accessibility studies, corridor development, and some case studies. With the varying opinions on how to determine and measure accessibility, the author’s comparison is useful and shows that for a most part population, type of transit infrastructure, and usage rates are standard in determining this factor. As a whole, the authors are advocating for the building of road networks, and they show a compelling link between positive influx of GDP due to the development of infrastructure.

Transportation Infrastrucre in the Soviet Union : a quick lesson.

Transportation infrastructure, for the purposes of this paper is going to be limited to roads and industrial rail for freight and passenger services. Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union set the model for infrastructure development in centrally planned economies with the “neglect of transport costs in location decisions [and] very intensive use of rail and freight services” (Aghion and Schankerman 1999). Although there was some development of passenger rail and personal transportation, centrally planned government tended to focus freight rail in order to transport manufactured goods to market. The general market benefits of building infrastructure are wide spread, and involve lowering the cost of the transportation of goods, while also providing incentives for new firms to enter into the market. (Aghion and Schankerman 1999)

A good majority of the development of Soviet rail lines and transportation were outlined prior to the advent of the Second World War and were expressed in the various “Five Year Plans” that were developed until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. As a whole, “except for the old historical centers, almost all of Russian urban growth has taken place during the socialist era…[and] the fact that urban development took place in a period when land was nationalized and administratively allocated…has had a very profound impact on the internal organization of Russian cities” (Bertaud and Renaud 1994). Land allocation in a nation without free markets led to an overdevelopment of industry and rail lines that would likely not have naturally occurred. By 1993, the former territory of the Soviet Union had approximately 140km/100,000 of the population for rail density and only approximately 85 km/100,000 of population of road density. Although the density of roads was comparable to the European Union (EU) in 1993 which had approximately 100 km/100,000 of population the density of rail between the show an even larger disparity with the EU having only 50 km/100,000 of population. (Aghion and Schankerman 1999) Although the Soviet Union had developed a significant amount of rail, most of those lines remained within the borders of the newly formed Russia, leaving only about 35 km/100,000 of population in the remaining CIS states with Russia having just over 100 km/100,000 of population for rail density.

The under-development of road transportation was intended under the central planning of the Soviet Union. (IRU, 2002) For the Soviet Union the emphasis on rail was due to the association with industry and strength, as well as created a steel industry for creating the rails and equipment. The legacy of rail in the Soviet Union left a solid network of freight rail, with no real passenger rail or road alternative to travel. Although the rails were useful for the initial industrial development of the nations, unlike most other states, the Soviet Union did not turn to the development of roads or truck-based transit of goods.

New Title, Old Blog

This blog is being redone as thesis reasearch and a way to keep me accountable to posting here and continuing reseraching on my end. The premise of the thesis is this:

Increased spending into transportation infrastructure (specifically roads) will have a more immediate GDP impact, which will also positively impact per capita income and will in turn lead to higher standards of living and more democratic states.

A fair amount of research has been done by the people over at freedomhouse.org and within other political journals that per capital income above $10,000/year greatly increases democratic practices. I'm a little more interested on the human development side of things, but democratic states also tend to have better human rights and resources.

There has not been a lot of research on this topic, but there is a literature review for this thesis. It will be posted in the coming days.

Enjoy, and happy discussions.