The relationship between transport and development is neither obvious nor simple. Simply building a road does not guarantee that development will take place. Also, studies show that provision of a transport facility does not bring benefit to all social groups equally. The main beneficiaries of a new road, for example, are usually traders and middle-income groups, who have the capacity to take advantage of an expanded network to increase their livelihood. The rural poor (the largest social group in developing countries) usually derive very little benefit from traditional transport systems, and in many cases their livelihood suffers because of them.

Transport systems in practice clearly perform more than just an economic function, they provide an important social function, too. People use roads (and, much more widely, tracks and footpaths) to fetch water, move animals, bring in firewood, visit their relatives, go to school, travel to a health centre or visit the weekly market. Also, people with little money travel in vehicles other than cars. They travel on foot, by bicycle, in carts, on a cycle rickshaw or riding a horse, donkey or buffalo.

In developing countries, therefore, the provision of transport services goes far beyond providing a smooth, wide carriageway for transit of goods and people over long distances in order to increase trade. Transport routes are the arteries of life, but for most people in developing countries, 'life' refers to the life of the rural poor. The concepts involved in providing transport for these people differ in many respects from traditional concepts in transport planning.

This page is under development, and at present gives only an outline of some of the issues involved.

As a start, a diagram is displayed that gives an indication of the complexity of the issues involved. The stack of cubes in the diagram illustrates that transport systems consist of three components - institutional, physical and socio-environmental. The institutional component (z axis) represents the policies, institutions and technologies involved in bringing transport systems into being. The physical component (y axis) represents the carriageway (e.g., road or railway line) and the vehicles running on it. The socio-environmental component (x axis) represents the entities that use and benefit, or suffer, by the presence of the transport system and its operation.

The individual cubes making up the stack represent the specific interactions of institutional, physical and socio-environmental components. These interactions typically form the focus of research projects (as well as implementation programmes), where the aim is to quantify the factors concerned and learn to incorporate them into the design and planning process. In other words, by understanding the needs of the all transport users and recognising the importance to society of non-economic benefits as well as the economic benefits, research can help to produce better transport systems in the future.