Assessment of rural transport accessibility in Bangladesh

Abstract

ABSTRACT

This research paper has been prepared to estimate rural transport accessibility index to help decision makers integrate transport interventions into poverty reduction programs and to develop the relationships between rural accessibility improvement and socio-economic parameters of Bangladesh.

In order to achieve the objectives of this research, at first road transport network of Bangladesh was collected from Roads and Highways Department (RHD) and Local Government Engineering Department (LGED). The district administrative area boundary was collected from LGED. Then the demographic and socio-economic data of sixty-four (64) districts of Bangladesh was collected from Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS). The road network and administrative boundary data are in the form of GIS environment. The districts demographic statistics are in the form of tabular data.

After collecting the data, the analyses were done using GIS software and Microsoft Excel Analysis Toolpack (e.g. Data Analysis Tool, Data Solver Tool). Rural Transport Accessibility was estimated by ArcGIS-ArcMap. From the analysis, rural transport accessibility index of sixty-four (64) districts of Bangladesh has been estimated considering only the paved road transport (motorable all the year round) network across the country. Then the estimated accessibility value has been compared with the poverty incidence and with other socio-economic parameters to establish a relation among them. At the bottom line, a district ranking was prepared to prioritize the budget allocation in physical infrastructure that will seek help the policy maker to foster poverty free and equitable development vision of Bangladesh.

Moreover, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Correlation Analysis were carried out to establish the priority ranking setting the target to minimize the objective function (in this case poverty incidence) and to investigate the correlation (if exists any) among the accessibility to the poverty incidence and socio-economic parameters.