Assessing Rural Accessibility and Rural Roads Investment Needs Using Open Source Data
Rural accessibility is the only metric used in the Sustainable Development Goals to track progress toward better transport services in low- and middle-income countries. This paper estimates the rural accessibility index, defined as the proportion o...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/759461550242864626/Assessing-Rural-Accessibility-and-Rural-Roads-Investment-Needs-Using-Open-Source-Data http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31309 |
| Summary: | Rural accessibility is the only metric
used in the Sustainable Development Goals to track progress
toward better transport services in low- and middle-income
countries. This paper estimates the rural accessibility
index, defined as the proportion of the rural population who
live within 2 kilometers of an all-season road, in 166
countries using open data. It then explores the cost of
increasing the rural accessibility index in 19 countries,
using an algorithm that prioritizes rural roads investments
based on their impact on rural access and connectivity.
Investment costs quickly balloon as the rural accessibility
index increases, questioning the affordability of universal
access to paved roads for many countries by 2030. If
countries spent 1 percent of their gross domestic product
annually on the upgrade of rural roads, even under
optimistic assumptions on growth of gross domestic product,
rural accessibility would only increase from 39 to 52
percent by 2030 across all developing countries. Alternative
solutions to rural integration must thus be implemented in
the short run until countries can afford to increase
significantly access to all weather roads. For example,
drones that supply regular food and medicine supply to
remote communities are much more affordable than roads in
the short term. |
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