Transport Infrastructure and Regional Development: A Survey of Literature on Wider Economic and Spatial Impacts

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 

 

Dear Authors,

Congratulations for your interesting research. I have some suggestions on how to make your text more attractive for wider audience.

The literature review should be precised. Citing many papers at once without more details about value added in cited papers makes no sense for the reader. I refer for example to …. This gave rise to a number of publications in countries previously 71 considered as developing ones, i.e. in Asia – in [7-13], India [14-16], Pakistan [17], Taiwan 72 [18]; Armenia, Georgia and Turkey [19-20], Russia [21] or in the Middle East [22], as well 73 as in Eastern Europe (in Poland [23-31] and Croatia [32]) and Southern Europe (in Greece 74 [33-34], Spain [35], Portugal [36] and in Italy [37]) and other. I recommend summing up the value added of each of these cited papers.

On the other hand, the topic should be settled in a broader discussion on positive externalities produced by investments in infrastructure. It has been recently revealed that investment in infrastructure may help solving housing poverty problem, a resonant issue accross Europe (confirmed by DOI: 10.52950/ES.2021.10.2.003). Also, countries with relevant improvement in infrastructure have whitnessed a clear improvement in poverty status (See here: DOI: 10.52950/ES.2022.11.1.009).

In this regards, it is advisable to reveal the importance of investments in infrastructure in increasing labour mobility. Regions with insufficient infrastructure face traditionally low labour mobility and suffer from higher and longer unemployment (This relationship is confirmed here: DOI: 10.52950/ES.2021.10.2.005).

The New Economic Geography stresses the role of infrastructure investments for atractiveness of a region for FDI  (confirmed her (DOI: 10.52950/ES.2019.8.2.010). This aspect should not be neglected.

I suggest referencing these examples from other countries.

These are interesting points of view to be included and referenced in your research in order to attract more attention from international audience. 

Last remark: standard paper structure is desirable. Your research should include Introduction, Literature review, Data and Methodology, Discussion of results, Conclusions.

Good Luck!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your review and comments. Please, see the attached file with our responses to your comments.

Best regards,

Piotr Rosik and Julia Wójcik

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper expounds the research methods of the relationship between transportation infrastructure and regional development through literature review, which is of great significance. I have some suggestions to help you improve the quality of your articles to meet the publishing standards.

1. There are many abbreviations in the abstract, but I don't fully understand what they stand for. Maybe the author has explained them in the article, but this may confuse readers and reduce their interest in the article. It is suggested that the author can add the full names of IO, LUTI, SCGE and other abbreviations in the abstract as CBA and MCA do.

2. The abstract is very substantial, but it is repeated with the main text. For example, lines 9-12 and 60-64 are exactly the same, and lines 6-9 and 78-82 are exactly the same. It's hard for me to accept such a expression. It should be a high-level summary of the research contents and conclusion of this paper. Apparently, the author copied the relevant contents of this article. This behavior will make readers lose interest in this article. Author are advised to rewrite the abstract.

3. Part of the introduction is rich in content, but the author does not seem to explain the original contribution or innovation of this article. There may be some explanation in this article, but it needs to be discussed clearly in the introduction.

4. There is a flaw in the structure of this article. From the content, title 3 should contain title 4 and title 5, instead of "parallel" relationships. It is proposed to change headings 4 and 5 to sub-headings 3.1 and 3.2.

5. The article lists a large number of literatures and elaborates on the wider spatial and economic impact of the methodology of the relationship between transportation infrastructure and regional development, but does not pay too much attention to the future development direction and research focus. This makes it difficult to understand the meaning of this manuscript, and this is also the reader's most concerned problem.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your review and comments. Please, see the attached file with our responses to your comments.

Best regards,

Piotr Rosik and Julia Wójcik

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The article presented to me for review meets the criterion of scientificity and brings scientific value. The authors conducted an interesting literature review, combining the technique of a narrative literature review with a methodical literature review. In the introduction, they referred to the research problem, drawing attention to various economic theories. They also indicated the geographic root. Noteworthy is the ability to use the correct transport nomenclature.

Reference was made to both newer and older literature, but in this context, the selection of sources was justified. Up to 148 references were reached.

A valuable tool is the author's table 2, which fills the cognitive gap.

I would extend the conclusions by indicating the limitations of literature research and the authors' innovativeness. In the introduction, I would add a short description of the structure of the article.

 

Maybe the authors will find additional inspiration in:

Szaruga, E.; Załoga, E. Sustainable Development Programming of Airports by Identification of Non-Efficient Units. Energies 2022, 15, 932. https://doi.org/10.3390/en15030932

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your review and comments. Please, see the attached file with our responses to your comments.

Best regards,

Piotr Rosik and Julia Wójcik

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

This paper addresses a topic that raise in the interest of industry and academia in the past years. Although it is not new, it is always interesting to see outcomes regarding methods that are applied to asses investment projects.

 

In the abstract:

The authors should better explain which methods they applied to reach to their outcomes.

 

In section 1, the introduction:

The formulation in the following sentence is vague (how one can define adequately?), please reformulate: “In addition, present-day publications do not adequately address wider spatial impacts (WSIs)”

The paragraphs in the intro section look more like individual reflections and opinions of the authors. The authors should make a greater effort in adding citations to formulations/conclusions which are very strong. These formulations cannot be used as academic foundation if not previously validated.

In section 2

One would expect to learn about the method used in the research.

In section 3

The text is too short to be a section on its own. Please merge this with the following chapter.

In section 6

The conclusions should be much more elaborated. The conclusion seems to be now just a reiteration of the initial general statements (sometimes from the intro or section 2)

This paper misses very much the academicism of the work as such. The authors should make a greater effort to develop a replicable method and come to generic results that can be replicable.

 

This study can benefit from more background information, create a broader analysis framework and give details on how the scope of this research relates/fits in the general geographical picture, but also how does it relates/fit to the existing literature (case studies in other geographical areas). 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your review and comments. Please, see the attached file with our responses to your comments.

Best regards,

Piotr Rosik and Julia Wójcik

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 5 Report

At the end of Section 1, the outline of the article should be explicitly described. Section 3 is very short, and it seems that Sections 4 and 5 should be sub-sections under Section 3. In Section 5, there should be an introductory paragraph describing the sub-sections 5.1 to 5.5.

·       On line 8, the abbreviation WEIs is not defined.

·       On line 12, the abbreviations IO, LUTI, SCGE are not defined.

·       On line 63, the abbreviations IO, LUTI and SCGE must be spelled out as they appear for the first time in the manuscript.

·       On line 87, the publication information (e.g. Volume, year) for “Sustainability’s Special Issue The role of transport infrastructure in regional development” should be provided.

·       On line 92, “single-criteria” should read “single-criterion”.

·       On line 103, the abbreviation EA appears for the first time without its definition.

·       On line 125-126, the abbreviations AHP, TOPSIS, PROMETHEE and DEA appear for the first time without their definitions. The definition of AHP is given on line 128; this should be moved to line 125.

·       In Table 1, there is a letter “v” used in many places.  What does it mean?

·       In Table 1, the abbreviation GHG appears for the first time without its definition.

·       On line 193, the abbreviation TENs appears for the first time without its definition. TENs is defined as Trans-European Network on line 290; this should be moved to line 193.

·       On line 346, should the term “special dependency” read “spatial dependency?

·       On line 355, a citation should be provided for new economic geography models.

·       On line 385, “less important that” should read “less important than”.

·       On line 425-426, the sentence “The Keynesian multiplier…” should have a citation.

·       On line 481, the abbreviation “NEG” should be given right after its definition “New Economic Geography”.

·       On line 523, the abbreviation CGE appears for the first time without its definition, which is defined on line 560.

·       On line 588, the word “spatial” should be boldfaced.

·       On line 601, please spell out the abbreviation EIB.

·       On line 640, a citation should be given for the SCGE RHOMOLO model.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your review and comments. Please, see the attached file with our responses to your comments.

Best regards,

Piotr Rosik and Julia Wójcik

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf