Texas Toll Roads: The Flawed Benefits and Costs

by Alexander Simmons As Texas is faced with a burgeoning population and further economic development, its poor transportation infrastructure becomes a greater issue. In the past decade, the state has chosen to address this problem through toll roads financed by public-private partnerships. Currently, Texas lawmakers are debating building new toll roads or converting already existing highways into tolls. In theory, tolls help improve the mobility...

Read More

Crossing the Scandinavian Waters: Oresund Bridge

by Katalin Molnarfi Copenhagen is a fairly small, but rather cool and well-run city, dressed with posters advertising green energy. Though nothing characterises it more than its delicate Oresund Bridge, the longest of its type in Europe, and winner of the IABSE Outstanding Structure Award. Board a train in Copenhagen and in a comfortable twenty minutes you will find yourself in Malmo, Sweden's third-largest city. The Copenhagen international...

Read More

Importance of the First Nature Geography in Regional Development

by Otabek Saydikaharov Spatial inequality in a country could be because of the natural advantages of some regions comparing to others and also due to the agglomeration effects which might lead to clustering of activities. Advantage of first nature geography simply means that being close to rivers, coasts, ports, forests etc. some regions may benefit from natural endowments through specialization in certain type of activities like fishing ,...

Read More

History Matters: Two Significant Barriers to the Regional Policy of Mongolia

by Manlaibaatar ZagdbazarAccording to the New Economic Geography theory, history matters because increasing returns to scale generate positive feedbacks that tend to cause economies to “lock in” to particular locations. Here, however, I would like to analyze other kind of reasons to show that history really matters.1) Path dependence in railway standards. As railways developed and expanded, one of the key issue was that of the track gauge...

Read More

Trans-Siberian Railway: Voice of Siberia

by Ekaterina Serikova Do you know where Siberia is located? Some Europeans feel that it is just “too far”. I would not exaggerate by saying that even Russians do not always know exactly where this region is located, assuming the periphery of it. However, it would have been even worse  if  in  the  20th   century  the  general  governor  of  Eastern  Siberia  N.  Muravyov-...

Read More

Have Citizens of Belgrade Paid Too Much?

by Snezana Ilic In everything that man pushes by his vital instinct, builds and raises, nothing is more beautiful or more precious than bridges. Bridges are more important than houses, more sacred because they are more useful than temples. They belong to everybody and they are the same for everybody, always built in the right place in which the major part of human necessity crosses, more durable than all other constructions and they do not...

Read More

Addiction to Ryanair

by Vija Pakalkaite A Ryanair story takes place in a tiny airport of Kaunas which is the second largest city in Lithuania. This story could be compared to drug addiction in such a way that it provides euphoria (region is quickly developing), but has its costs (the “health” of a country Lithuania is weakening – people are emigrating). Short history Ryanair came to Lithuania in 2005 and chose Kaunas airport to operate. Due to an economically...

Read More

The Success of ZGC Science Park, China

by Anastasiia Shirinina In the 1980s, the idea of a science park establishment quickly moved beyond the Western countries and parks were also established in Brazil, India, Malaysia, in the former "Eastern Bloc" - in Eastern Europe, CIS and China.  There are about 400 science parks created in the world today. Many others are in the process of creation. The success of science parks in promoting technology transfers and attracting clusters...

Read More

Economic Effects of Cologne (Köln) - Frankfurt High Speed Rail

by Natalia Costin The Cologne – Frankfurt high speed rail started operating in 2002 .The Speed of the train, running at 320 km/h, reduced the journey from 2hr 15 min to over an hour. The number of passengers willing to travel increased significantly by 2010 to around 20-25 million from 9 million. With high speed rail, travel time between Frankfurt and Cologne is 55 percent faster than with old track and 35 percent faster than with travel by...

Read More

Deepening the Port of Charleston

by Daniel Bunn In 2004, the Port of Charleston took its inner harbor to a depth of 45 feet making it the deepest port in the South Atlantic. Since that time, the port has risen to become the 8th most active U.S. port as measured by the dollar value of goods handled. However, with the ever-constant forces of globalization and technological progress at work, it is now necessary for the port to be dredged to a depth of 50 feet. The simple reason...

Read More

Why are Transport Projects so Important for Our Economic Development?

By Evgenia Ivanova As the US President Barack Obama has once said: “A major new high-speed rail line will generate many thousands of construction jobs over several years, as well as permanent jobs for rail employees and increased economic activity in the destinations these trains serve.” The quote is indeed true and it made me think how we rarely have the chance to stop for a moment and consider the positive economic benefits of transport projects....

Read More

Is the Game Worth the Candle?

by Nurgul TilenbaevaIs the game worth the candle? This is a “number one” question in the minds of economists, politicians, and the general public in Kyrgyzstan with regards to the new railway project “China – Kyrgyzstan – Uzbekistan”. As the name suggests, this new transport line initiated by the respective governments of three countries intends to connect China to Central Asian region, namely Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan (see Graph 1). Far from being...

Read More