Transportation’s Role in Economic Development and Regional Supply Chain Hubs

This article (re)introduces the supply chain management academic audience to the critical relationship between transportation infrastructure, freight traffic, economic market drivers, and regional economic development. With the growing importance of transportation, logistics, and supply chain economics to support industrial activities, specific supply chain asset investments can significantly impact national, local, and regional economies. At the same time, the relative availability, quality, and cost of a range of transportation services, particularly those relevant to essential intermodal activities and infrastructure influence firms’ location decisions. By introducing an economic-geography perspective to a thus-far transportation-centric conversation, this article explores how states and their regions compete based on economic value propositions adopted on a much broader scale.