Road Infrastructure in the Regions of the Slovak Republic and Poland
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Bulletin of Geography. Socio–economic Series / No. 33 (2016): 79–90 BULLETIN OF GEOGRAPHY. SOCIO–ECONOMIC SERIES DE journal homepages: http://www.bulletinofgeography.umk.pl/ http://wydawnictwoumk.pl/czasopisma/index.php/BGSS/index http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/bog ISSN 1732–4254 quarterly G Road infrastructure in the regions of the Slovak Republic and Poland Jana Masárová1, CDFMR, Eva Ivanová2, CDFMR Alexander Dubček University of Trenčín, Faculty of Social and Economic Relations, Department of Economics and Economy, Študentská 3, 911 500 Trenčín, Slovakia; 1phone: +421 327 400 425, fax: +421 327 400 415; e-mail: [email protected] (corresponding author); 2 phone: +421 327 400 420, fax: +4213 274 004 15; e-mail: [email protected] How to cite: Masárová, J. and Ivanová, E., 2016: Road infrastructure in the regions of the Slovak Republic and Poland. In: Środa-Murawska, S. and Dymitrow, M. editors, Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series, No. 33, Toruń: Nicolaus Copernicus University, pp. 79–90. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/bog-2016-0026 Abstract. One of the important assumptions and factors of social and economic Article details: development of countries and their regions is road infrastructure. This is particu- Received: 30 March 2015 larly true in countries where road transport is the largest component of overall Revised: 29 July 2015 transportation, such as in Slovakia and Poland. Road infrastructure as part of the Accepted: 26 January 2016 transport infrastructure is here regarded as one of the main pillars for achieving economic growth, to increase competitiveness and prosperity, contributing to the Key words: development of the Trans-European transport network and the improvement of region, transport infrastructure in support of a single European market in order to ensure road infrastructure, the free flow of goods, people and overall competitiveness of the EU. This article motorway, offers a comparison of road infrastructure in Slovakia and Poland, highlighting expressway, regional disparities in road infrastructure in these countries. road density. © 2016 Nicolaus Copernicus University. All rights reserved. Contents: 1. Introduction, material and research methods .............................................. 80 2. The role of road infrastructure in regional development .................................... 81 3. Road infrastructure in the Slovak Republic................................................ 82 4. Road infrastructure in Poland ........................................................... 84 5. Comparison of road infrastructure in Slovakia and Poland.................................. 87 6. Discussion and conclusion .............................................................. 88 Acknowledgements........................................................................ 88 References ............................................................................... 88 © 2016 Nicolaus Copernicus University. All rights reserved. © 2016 De Gruyter Open (on-line). 80 Jana Masárová, Eva Ivanová / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series / 33 (2016): 79–90 ings, electrical systems, etc. needed to provide safe, 1. Introduction, material trouble-free and efficient traffic. and research methods In this article we analyse the level of develop- ment of the road network and its disparities in the Sustainable economic growth and economic devel- regions of Slovakia and Poland in the period 2005– opment are impossible without taking into account –2013. Our research is carried out in Slovak regional aspects. The development of individual re- self-governing regions and Polish voivodships. gions is affected by the level of utilization of avail- The geographical position of Slovakia, in the able resources of the region, but also through the central part of continental Europe, and Poland influence of the instruments of regional and eco- with access to the sea and to major ports of Eu- nomic policy. The effect of the growth factors in the rope makes these neighboring states work together economy can be reduced if the existing potential of on building transport infrastructure, which is part regions is not utilized and their development slows of Europe’s major transport corridors. Slovak terri- down. It causes persistence of the negative effects of tory is crossed by three of the nine European core differentiation in the developing regions. This is -re network corridors, with the Baltic-Adriatic Corri- flected at the national level and has impact on the dor being one of the most important ones for the economy. development of transport infrastructure of the Slo- The development of countries and regions is af- vak Republic and Poland (Figure 1). International fected by their available resources, and road in- transport corridors influence the national transport frastructure is one of them. It includes all road network, built as part of the regional development categories, facilities, structures, signage and mark- of these countries. Fig. 1. Europe Core Network Corridors in Slovakia and Poland Explanation: Baltic – Adriatic North Sea– Baltic Mediterranean Rhine-Danube Orient/East-Med Source: http://ec.europa.eu/transport/infrastructure/tentec/tentec-por- tal/site/en/maps.html Jana Masárová, Eva Ivanová / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series / 33 (2016): 79–90 81 We used the method of time series analysis, Rietveld and Bruinsma (1998) and others have comparison and synthesis in this article. The meth- examined the direct and indirect effects of trans- od of comparison was used for comparing the road port infrastructure on regional development, as well infrastructure and economic level in the regions of as costs associated with the development of trans- the Slovak Republic and Poland. The applied meth- port infrastructure. The role of road infrastructure od of comparison and analysis is realized through in regional development has been examined by localization and coefficient of variation. Linneker and Spence (1996), Rienstra et al. (1998), The coefficient of localization represents the Habánik and Koišová (2011), Havierniková and Jan- proportion of the types of roads (motorways and ský (2014) and numerous others. speedways) in regions to the total length of roads Some international institutions, e.g. Organiza- and to the area of regions. It is calculated accord- tion for Economic Co-operation and Development ing to the equation: (OECD) and World Bank have examined road in- frastructure and its impact on economic and re- R j gional development. OECD investigated current R evaluation studies of major transport infrastructure L j = Aj projects in OECD Member countries with an aim to A identify impacts of transport infrastructure invest- ment on regional development. Where: Although the role and importance of transport Lj = localization coefficient infrastructure in regional development have been Rj = the length of roads (motorways, expressways) researched for a long time, the views and opinions in a given region of some economists and geographers differ. Some R = the length of roads (motorways and express- authors consider road infrastructure to be a neces- ways) in a country sary condition (although not sufficient) in regional Aj = the area of the region development, on the other hand there are more and A = the area of the country more authors who criticize the overvaluation of the role of road infrastructure in regional development To calculate the coefficients, we took data in the (Hey 1996, Bray 1992 and others). time series between 2005 and 2013. The method of The authors investigating searching the impact synthesis was used to draw conclusions resulting of motorways network development on regional de- from the analysis. velopment do not share one common opinion. One The statistical data from the Slovak and Polish group of authors defends the opinion that motor- national and regional databases are used; some data ways have a positive impact on regional develop- are retrieved from the Eurostat. ment (Carlino, 1987; Garcia-Milà, 1992 and others). The other group of authors defends the opposite opinion claiming that building up motorways does 2. The role of road infrastructure not have a positive impact on regional develop- in regional development ment and does not result in higher economic effec- tiveness (Munnell, 1992; Holtz-Eakinand Schwartz, 1994; Rephann, 1994 and others). Some authors deal with the importance of infra- At this point it is necessary to say that the re- structure in regional development in their scientif- search studies of the latter group of authors focus ic works, e.g. Nijkamp (1986), Tvrdoň et al. (1995), on countries with a developed motorways infra- Ghosh and De (1998), Adamkovičová (2013) and structure and therefore its enlargement is consid- others. Transport infrastructure as a part of infra- ered to be ineffective. Of course, this is not the case structure and its role in the regional development of Slovakia and Poland, where a motorways and ex- has been studied by Evers et al. (1987), Percolo pressways infrastructure has not been completed (2003), Oosterhaven and Knaap (2003), Spieker- yet, although it could have connected parts of the mann and Wegener (2006), Hong et al. (2011). countries and made the road transport safer. 82 Jana Masárová, Eva Ivanová / Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series / 33 (2016): 79–90 The term road infrastructure is used for a net- ture also affects other factors, such as the develop- work of roads which which makes it possible to ment of tourism,