Any statistic is only as good as the quality of the data used to
derive it. Road and rail construction data is often outdated or
inaccurate, and possibly never reported, in some foreign countries
with either unstable or inefficient governments. Notwithstanding,
there are organizations that track infrastructure growth. I have
provided links to some data and calculated an estimate for road and
rail construction over the last five years.
For historical road-construction data, your best option is the
International Road Federation, which has data for sale at (
http://www.irfnet.org/wrs.asp ). Barring access to that data, I
extrapolated road-construction figures using methodology set out by a
World Bank study ( http://www.worldbank.org/research/journals/wber/revsep98/pdf/article%207.pdf
). Because of the vagaries of reporting in various countries, plus a
number of unexplained large changes, World Bank calls data for total
roads unreliable, and my estimates are rough at best. For a detailed
analysis, you can subscribe to the World Bank Economic Review (
http://www.worldbank.org/research/journals/subscribe.htm ) for
$40/year. The World Bank report also mentions train tracks, though I
have posted an actual data source for that information below.
According to the World Bank, there are on average 4.16 miles of roads
for each 1,000 people in the world. There are also 0.18 miles of
railroad track. Using world population estimates from the U.S. Census
Bureau ( http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldpop.html ), I come up with
the following numbers:
2000 1999 1998 1997 1996
Road miles 25,288,543 24,967,914 24,641,424 24,313,336 23,981,432
Chg. 320,629 326,490 328,088 331,904 329,505
% Chg. 1.3% 1.3% 1.3% 1.4% 1.4%
Track miles 1,092,947 1,079,090 1,064,980 1,050,800 1,036,455
Chg. 13,857 14,111 14,180 14,345 14,241
% Chg. 1.3% 1.3% 1.3% 1.4% 1.4%
Both road miles and track miles will generally increase with
population, but not proportionally. The World Book study has a
complicated equation to determine changes, but using the averages we
can get a ballpark estimate of growth.
If you’d like to look at historical rail-construction data for
individual countries, try
http://www.worldbank.org/transport/rail/rdb.htm. What you’re looking
for is the Rail Statistics Database, which you can download. The
database is very detailed, but not complete, in that data from many
countries is not reported. The database does represent much of the
world, but in some cases, annual data is not available for certain
countries. However, the 20 biggest builders in 1996 represented fully
86% of all the available data, so I’m providing growth figures using
those countries because the data is cleaner.
For 1996. the latest year for which data is available for most of the
biggest countries, 26,142 miles of track were added. For the four
previous years, here are the changes in total track miles (-18,883,
55,551, 6599, -18,377). These numbers are not too dependable, because
there are a number of countries for which data is omitted in any given
year. A blank field in the table represents either missing data, or no
construction. The latter is possible, which suggests that using the
data as is would be wise. However, there are so many blanks in the
table, I’ve come up with an alternative calculation, which suggests
track miles are actually decreasing, at least in the largest
countries. For this cleaner, if less representative, number I’ve now
limited myself to all the countries with six consecutive years of
data. Since I’ve shrunk the field, I can use more current data.
Using 40 countries that comprise 80% of all track miles, here are my
numbers:
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
Track miles 381,838 378,271 374,108 373,853 373,047
Chg. -211 -3,567 -4,163 -255 -806
% Chg. -0.06% -0.93% -1.10% -0.07% -0.22%
Track miles 381,838 378,271 374,108 373,853 373,047
Chg. -211 -3,567 -4,163 -255 -806
% Chg. -0.06% -0.93% -1.10% -0.07% -0.22%
These number don’t match the estimates calculated above, probably
because the fastest percentage growth in railroads is occurring in the
countries where data collection is least reliable, which are
underrepresented in the database. Population growth is minimal in the
U.S. and other Western countries as compared to Third World nations,
and since rail growth is tied to population growth, the numbers above
make sense.
Without the U.S., track miles rose fractionally in 1998 and 1999.
Researchers have extrapolated the data to account for missing pieces
in developing countries, but I won’t speculate as to how they did it.
The information in the railroad database is not complete, and is
probably best suited for analyzing developed countries, or individual
countries. While the numbers don’t match, when you consider the
context of developed countries, they jibe with other stories that
suggest railroad spending is decreasing as a percentage of
transportation spending.
Additional sources:
For some interesting analysis on road construction in Asia, check out
this article.
http://www.itdp.org/read/HABDEB.doc
The World Bank has produced an interesting analysis of transportation
trends, including factoids like transport lending represents about 15%
of the World Bank’s loan portfolio, rail and port lending are on the
decline, and 30% of road lending is for new construction, the rest for
repair.
http://www.worldbank.org/transport/publicat/twu_22.pdf |
