Selection and justification procedures for rural roads improvement projects

conference which identified inadequate road selection procedures as a frequent reason why A.I.D. rural road improvement projects fail to help their intended beneficiaries, this report presents guidelines for project selection and justification. Selection procedures are reviewed for A.I.D. rural road projects in Liberia, Jamaica, Bolivia, Kenya, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, and Colombia, and a proposed application of linear programming to road selection is discussed. Good road selection criteria, it is noted, should be comprehensive (giving due consideration to economic growth, quality of life, and equity), cost-effective, easily applicable by local technicians with consultant help, and flexible enough to allow best judgment by experts on the basis of verifiable assumptions. The criteria should also enable A.I.D. project officers to exclude economically infeasible roads and identify politically biased calculations. Presented next is a three-phase selection procedure for rural roads projects: (1) initial screening of road location and length, population served, community commitment to maintain roads, land ownership, and present condition/cost of improvement; (2) socioeconomic ranking according to economic factors (agricultural potential, degree of access improvement, and the extent of parallel development activities in the road influence area), access to social services, and equity; and (3) economic justification in terms of likely impact of a specific road on agricultural production and personal mobility. A lengthy analysis of the Haiti Secondary Rural Roads Project is provided to exemplify economic justification methodology. A brief discussion of field data collection activities needed to implement the above-noted selection and justification procedures concludes the report.