The purpose of the book is to discuss the ways in which fixed transportation capital of a given total quantity should be allocated in two-dimensional space so that reasonable requirements for economic efficiency are met. Chapter I outlines the organisation of the book. Chapter II describes the problem of the optimum allocation of road capital, given a certain distribution of traffic by means of a much simplified case, where the region is a one-dimensional interval. In chapter III the general two-dimensional case is introduced. Chapter IV discusses the choice of optimum paths when the transfer cost function is a given datum. In chapter V the knowledge of optimum paths and of the proper definition of traffic is used to complete traffic distribution explicitly for two cases, namely when all paths are linear and when all paths are radial, respectively. Chapter VI briefly outlines the development of gravity and entropy models of interaction. Chapter VII takes distance of the elasticity of transportation demand into the picture. In chapter VIII an attempt is made to develop a direct method to compute traffic distribution. In chapter IX the direct method is used to calculate traffic distributions with non constant populations. In chapter X the measure of transfer cost is formally related to road capital by a simplified model. In chapter XI the specifications of the transfer cost function is used to derive the optimum allocation of road capital when the distribution of traffic is a given datum. Chapter XII supplies some empirical evidence for the method used. Chapter XIII looks how communication costs could be distributed for different locations to see if there are strangely conflicting interests as regards the location of roads for people living in different parts of the region. Finally in chapter XIV congestion and different land acquisition costs are taken into consideration.
Abstract