INFLUENCE OF REGIONAL TRANSPORT ACCESSIBILITY ON DEVELOPMENT OF SETTLEMENTS: A CASE OF VISAKHAPATNAM REGION

The evolution of road development started with the idea of connecting metropolitan cities with the surrounding region. “All roads lead to Rome” which also shows us that, urban development attracts transport infrastructure. But eventually, settlements started to evolve in close proximity to the roads, which shows that development is followed by a transportation network. This has led to a common debate on what should come first, Opportunities/Settlement or Transport Infrastructure. In view of the existing literature, the interdependency of Regional Development and Transport Infrastructure can be classified under three categories which are 1. Transport system (Infrastructure) follows regional development, 2. Infrastructure development as an inductor of regional development and 3. Equality in development emphasizes balanced economic growth and infrastructure in a region. (Botrić, Šišinački and Škuflić, 2006). This study is an attempt to understand the development of the Visakhapatnam district in a regional context and its relation to the regional transportation network. The relationship between the accessibility of regional transport at the nodal level and the development of major settlements has been studied for the same. After analyzing various indicators of development and transportation infrastructure, an impact assessment of two indicators has been done. One of the indicators to study development is the growth rate in terms of the population of the Visakhapatnam region and the indicator to study transport accessibility is Shimbel’s index of major nodes in the regional network. The Geographic Information System has been used as a tool to develop the Road network and to generate the initial connectivity matrix for calculating the Shimbel Index. After obtaining the data related to the indicators of regional development and transportation accessibility, regression analysis has been performed which shows the relationship between the development of major settlements and accessibility.