TRANSPORTATION AND WORLD DEVELOPMENT

The intercontinental transport network in much of the world dead-ends outside the major cities, and more than half of the world's people are stranded in rural hinterlands that are disconnected from the economic mainstream. While the mobile countries are affluent, immobility and poverty characterize large numbers of countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The question for world leaders and transport policy-makers is how these needs can be anticipated and appropriate efforts undertaken to hasten completion of the transportation system of the earth on which the world's development is so critically dependent.