As a basic industry of the national economy, the transportation industry provides important support and strong safeguard for regional economic development. The highway transportation as one way of comprehensive transportation, are developing rapidly these years. The study on support function of highway transportation to regional economic development thus is believed to meaningful and important.
Shandong province in measure of both highway and economic development is one of the top ranking provinces in China. In the past years, the highway traffic mileage of Shandong province increased from 3,152 km in 1949 to 229,858 km in 2010, which has a CAGR of 7.39%. At the same time, it’s economy is developing rapidly. As of 2010, GDP of Shandong province amounted to 3.9 trillion yuan. The CAGR of Shandong’s GDP from 1952 to 2010 is around 9.30%.
This paper studies the support function of highway transportation to economic development, taking Shandong Province as an epitome of the country, with the purpose to provide not only advices for Shandong Province in the future development but also advices to those areas which are under developed.
This paper uses the method of quantitative analysis. Research background and meaning is firstly discussed in the paper, the mutual influence between highway transportation and regional economic development is analyzed in the middle part. Especially four aspects which are the impact of highway transportation to the total economic, impact on the industrial structure, the impact of the industrial layout, and the impact of area border connection effect are discussed detailed in this part. In the last part of the paper, Shandong province highway transportation and economic development status are discussed and regional differences within it are analyzed by using a quantitative analysis on a historical data set.
By doing the studies and analysis above, conclusions of this research are derived. As a province, the highway transportation in Shandong province played a significant supporting role in economic development, and the next two years the role of momentum remains strong. In terms of small economic units such as cities and towns within the Province, comprehensive transportation played most significant role. The policy advices of this paper are development of the highway transportation especially sustainable development should be strengthened, highway transportation layout and structure should be improved, and coordinated development between different methods of transportation with other areas should be more emphasized.