Transportation Economics

in the USSR, the branch of economic science that studies patterns in the development and in the operations of transportation, which is regarded as a distinct sphere of material production.

Transportation economics, which includes the economics of railroad, maritime, river, motor-vehicle, air, and pipeline transportation, studies the engineering economics specific to each type of transportation as a part of the integrated transport network of the USSR. It studies operations, management organization, principles and methods for making optimal technological and organizational decisions, the economics of freight and passenger transportation, efficiency in developing a material and technical basis for transportation, the scientific organization of labor and wages, and categories and methods for measuring expenditures and results in transportation production.

Transportation economics, which is related to such branches of knowledge as national economic planning, industrial economics, agricultural economics, labor economics, statistics, economic geography, and the engineering sciences, develops scientific recommendations aimed at the improvement of transportation. These recommendations are used extensively in solving such important problems of the national economy as the proper locating of production throughout the various regions of the USSR, the selection of the proper dimensions of enterprises, and the provision of a viable economic basis for specialization and cooperation in production. Such recommendations help to relieve the transportation system of excessive work, to improve the system of material and technical supply in the national economy, to satisfy more completely the demand for shipping, and to reduce losses of industrial and agricultural output during transport. Research on the improved planning of passenger transport makes it possible to meet more fully the needs of the population in this area and to develop tourism.

Problems in transportation economics are studied at such institutions as the transportation economics subdepartment of the Moscow Institute of Transport Engineers, the Central Scientific Research Institute of the Ministry of Railroad Transport, and the Institute for Problems of Integrated Transport Systems. The present state and the development of transport economics are discussed in the publications Zheleznodorozhnyi transport, Morskoi flot, Rechnoi transport, Avtomobil’nyi transport, and Grazhdanskaia aviatsiia.