Assessment On The Accessibility And Reasonable Allocation Of Road

Improving road accessibility (RA) is an important measure to promote the development of the Chinese west. With characteristics of high efficient, flexibl e, Highway transportation is now primary transportation mean in northwest of China. It is a real question worth exploring how to obtain better social and ec onomic benefits under the restrictions of finite investment.This paper presents a framework of assessment on the accessibility and re asonable allocation of road. Firstly, we measure the RA based on the stock of road facilities, and compare the potential for interaction among regions. In ord er to calculate this index, I use RT(highway density measured by road area)ins tead of linear density of road network which was used by previous studies; Se condly, we estimate the terrain complexity with membership function according to altitude and slope, and set up an empirical relationship between terrain co mplexity and the investment of road construction, which represents the effect o f terrain conditions on the investments; Thirdly, we proposes a regional directi on to optimize road allocation according to both the stock of road facilities an d unit investment ratio.This paper takes 83 county-level districts of Gansu Province as analyzed u nits. The results show that the stock of road infrastructure is high density in t he hinterland and low density in remote areas in Gansu Province, but its distri bution trend is opposite based on averages of population and economic output values.The spatial pattern of terrain complexity is obvious in Gansu province, it declines from the southwest to the northeast. The effect of terrain complexity on the investment of road construction shows an exponential growth.Because the densities of human population and industry exists very imbala nce among regions, the allocation of road infrastructures in the future should n ot try for the equalization of the proportion that road occupied land area, but should increase RA of per capita and unit economic output value under the co nstraint of investment to achieve the equalization that road infrastructures serve society and economy. At present, the loess hilly region with higher population density should be the priority in the allocation of road infrastructures in Gans u Province.