General
Anyone wanting to know more about any of the development topics introduced in this website should explore the following sites: the IInternational Forum for Transport and Rural Development (IFTRD), the International Labour Organization (ILO/ASIST), the World Bank, and the Department for International Development (DFID). The Global Transport Knowledge Partnership (gTKP) also provides useful detail on rural transport issues, such as maintenance, road surfacing, Basic Access panning, Integrated Rural Accessibility Planning (IRAP).and many others.
History of road transport
Wikipedia provides a good overview of the history of road transport. There are relatively few sites on the subject. The seriously interested can do their own search or just get hold of a book (I recommend the titles below). I also suggest browsing among the websites of the numerous transport museums and even visiting one.
History of road construction
Road construction history is a very specialised taste. In general books are the best source on the history of road building and road transport systems (see also the list below). The sites of equipment manufacturers, many of which have been in business for a hundred and fifty years and more, are also sources for information on construction and farm machinery. I also recommend this one from the US.
Combatting corruption
Anyone working in development should visit the Ethical Edinburgh and Transparency International sites which are engaged in a courageous war against corruption, endemic in the poorer countries, especially in road infrastructure projects, which require heavy and easily plundered investments. Corruption can divert up to 10% of development expenditure from the poor into the pockets of those in power, who do not even reinvest locally, but rather divert it to banks in hard currency countries. Worse, by making nonsense of competition, it diverts funds from the better projects to the second best and even the worst ones. Finally, it undermines both the morale of the ruled and the ethical sense of the ruling and when endemic for a generation or more, destroys state institutions, often substituting dictatorial rule in their place, and leaving the country prey to civil strife and enormous suffering.
Documents
Finally, the following documents, edited from a presentation and some documents I wrote over the past few years, can be downloaded as pdf files:
References and acknowledgements
The books below are concerned largely with the history of transport in the United Kingdom. I have relied heavily on them for my history of transport pages.
Some have also provided me with the photos that are dotted about the pages. I apologist for my cavalier use of them. In most cases I have not been able to trace the source to get permission to use them. Should any still be within the limits of copyright I request the indulgence of the owner.
1) A History of Inland Transport and Communication by Edwin A. Pratt, David and Charles Reprints, published 1912, UK, reprinted 1970
2) Roads and Their Traffic 1750-1850, by John Copeland, again published by David and Charles Reprints, UK, 1968
3) English Local Government: The Story of the King’s Highway ,
Sidney & Beatrice Webb, published by Longmans, Green, UK, 1913
3a) The Railway Navvies, Terry Coleman, published by Penguin Books, 1968 (very entertaining)
4) Commercial Road Vehicles, E.L. Cornwell, published by B.T. Batford Ltd. London, 1960
5) Mechanization Takes Command, a contribution to anonymous history, Siegfried Giedion, W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1969
6) Old Motor and Vintage Commercial, 1963-1965, printed and published by North London Artists
7) British Transport: an Economic Survey from the Seventeenth Century to the Twentieth, Dyos and Aldcroft, Pelican Books 1974
8) Histoire de la locomotion terrestre, De Saulnier, Dollfus, et De Geoffroy, L’Illustration, 1935
Books about rural bus transport in developing countries are rare. This one is useful but is rather expensive:
Public Transport in Developing Countries, Richard Iles, Elsevier, USA, 2005
some of the books listed can perhaps be obtained from Abe Books, which incidentally, I strongly recommend as an excellent source for hard-to-get books. Most of the magazines are no longer published and I have not been able to trace either the publishers themselves or the names of the photographers.
