Indirect Economic Benefits of Transport Infrastructure Investments

Estimating the spatial economic impacts of transport infrastructure is an unresolved issue that plagues transport economics to this day. This paper applies to the estimation of indirect economic effects and the extent in which these represent benefits that are additional to the direct transport benefits. After a discussion of the various approaches available to tackle this problem, it is concluded that a spatial computable general equilibrium (SCGE) approach offers the best perspective for future research. To illustrate this, empirical results based on a SCGE model applied to four different magnetic levitation (Maglev) proposals for the Netherlands are presented. One of the main conclusions is that a simple uniform multiplier to add additional economic benefits op top of direct transport benefits does not exist.