Roads and their traffic form a mutually dependent transport system. Before deciding to improve a road we must be sure that it will actually be used. A road without users will no more bring about development than a school with no teachers will produce literacy.
Roads came into being to ease the movement of wheeled vehicles carrying heavy loads. They are of course useful for pedestrians or pack animals but their improved mobility will not be sufficient alone to cover the cost of building and maintaining them. By making it easier for animal-drawn waggons and later motor vehicles to get around a good road can reduce their operating costs and enable them to travel to places they could not before. However, traders and transporters may not seize the opportunity to provide or improve transport services, or cut fares. Instead, they may prefer to simply pocket the savings. When they pass at least a fraction of their gains to users we can expect a multiplier effect as individuals take advantage of their increased mobility and lower transport costs, for example, by marketing perishable products which would otherwise have rotted in the fields..
Things have not always worked out as hoped. Personal motor vehicle ownership, which allows users to profit directly from a better road, is rare in the least-developed countries, particularly in Africa. Public transport vehicle owners often cannot improve services since their vehicles are too old and decrepit and they cannot afford better ones. Even when they do, people cannot use them, perhaps because of lack of money to pay the fare, or markets to sell their products in, or more commonly, because they do not need a motor vehicle, or even a road, to get to the places they go to most. An improved track may be enough.
People travel for many reasons. However, when monetary incomes are low, people will prefer services they can walk to. Only in an emergency will they use a motor vehicle.. Furthermore, low incomes make people unwilling to take the inevitable risk in seizing new opportunities if spending on travel is involved. A stalemate results. The route stays little used and since the meagre savings it provides to users will not cover the costs of maintenance the community will be unwilling to look after it. The road will lapse back to its original state.
This can be avoided if more attention is devoted at the planning stage to determining where people actually travel to, which places or activities they would like to be more accessible and what measures need be taken so that they can profit from the road. Often more modest investments, in appropriate means of transport, in simple improvements in footpaths and tracks, or in better service coverage, can have a more sustainable impact on mobility than road improvement.. Alternatively public or private investment may be better directed to more health facilities such as dispensaries and schools to bring them closer to users. Community consultation through methods such as IRAP are a valuable tool in deciding the best application of the limited available resources between investing in basic access, higher standard roads or bringing facilities closer to users.
