HIGHWAY INVESTMENT AS A REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT POLICY TOOL

A technique was developed to estimate the regional development effects of highway investment. The study area was the Province of New Brunswick, Canada. A weak relationship between highway investment and regional development was found to exist. The results indicate that the hypothesis of saturation and shift may be occurring. As it becomes saturated, the highway network exhibits less of a developmental effect and begins to act as an agent to increase personal mobility. The results of the models indicated that highway investment was related to increased mobility in one of the five test regions. No relationship was evident in the other four economic regions in the study area. The analysis also indicated that highway development in New Brunswick progresses through three phases. In the first phase the highway network is not developed to a level at which it is capable of encouraging regional development. In the second phase the network acts as an agent for regional development, whereas in the third phase it becomes an agent for personal mobility.