Abstract | Full Paper | PDF | Printer friendly format

Rural roads are an important sector in rural development which deals in all aspects of development including agriculture, health, education, forestry, fisheries, small scale industries, trade, commerce etc. that depends on good communication. Rural transportation network will give shape to the living environment of villagers, rather roads of rural transportation are the connectivity elements in our society. Appropriate combination of various links both technically and economically can generate rural traffic infrastructure which should be prepared for the measure of land development. Rural road connectivity is not only the key component of Rural Development in India, it is also recognized as an effective poverty reduction programme. An improved accessibility to all quarters of a village is an indispensable prerequisite for the provision of adequate living conditions in rural areas. The interdependency in change of land use and transportation is not promoted in rural areas and this keeps the economic system inactive in these areas. The absence of roads in rural areas leads to stagnation of socio-economic conditions of the villagers. The present scenario in India warrants a serious thought on planning rural road network in a scientific way. The existing regional rural road planning practices are mainly based on adhoc criteria and lack of scientific research which are not giving any insight on pattern of connectivity. The current planning practice in India considers the connectivity based on the population of the villages and the small sized villages tend to get neglected in this method. The planning of rural road is not made in a comprehensive and co-ordinated manner. Another imbalance is the rural urban dichotomy. In developing countries, though the percentage of population living in rural areas is high, still 50 – 75% of the villages are yet to be connected. At this juncture, there is an urgent need to develop a scientific methodology for the assessment of rural travel demand which can promote a road network of hierarchical importance and wider range of connectivity basically from user, system owner and land use planning point of view. An attempt has been made to obtain the orientation of the corridor by applying the concept of “Resultant of coplanar concurrent force system” and later the road network configuration is developed using “Gravitational pull theory” and “Principle of moment” concepts. A hierarchical and optimal road network is developed scientifically based on the basic principles of physics assuming the mandal as a rigid body. The relative force of attraction in the gravitational pull theory between two bodies is used to analyse the demand potential of a particular place. The concept is justified from the fact that the attraction to a particular place is proportional to the impedance (distance) and the activities / facilities taking place (which is represented by the force / score of the particular place. This concept contributes to the development of broad based planning framework having diverse perspectives. Incorporating gravitational pull theory and principle of moment concept will involve village connectivity and will result in overall progress providing connectivity to remotest villages of the area.

In general a rural area is composed of number of mandals which in turn have various villages. The methodology is briefly presented in the following steps. The census information is used for advancing a technique for rural road network planning in a multi dimensional framework

Step 1: The various facilities available in the village are obtained form the census records and the data processing is done by assigning a set of points (Source: World bank guidelines) to the various facilities available in a village by a unique scoring pattern. Finally, a road need assessment rating will be used to rank the qualifying roads to establish priority of intervention. The cumulative score of all the facilities is considered as the force of the village.
Step 2: Mandal head quarters is identified and it is taken as the origin for drawing an arbitrary axis.
Step 3: The angle of deviation of every village with respect to Mandal head quarters is measured.
Step 4: Each force is then resolved into components that coincide with choosen axis.
Step 5: The components of each force with respect to these axes are then added algebraically and the direction of the resultant is found out
Step 6: Calculate the force of attraction between Mandal head quarters and each node by Gravitational formula. The data used is scores (Force) of villages and distance of separation. The village with highest force of attraction is identified and network is proposed in that direction.
Step 7: Calculate the moment of each village wrt Mandal Head quarters. The higher the moment of the village, more importance the village gets in connection.
Step 8: Develop the road network with respect to the derived resultants.

The study is attempted on the Medak district of Andhra Pradesh. This analysis has confirmed the need spatial planning of road network configuration, which can achieve desired results of economic, social interaction and overall development of a region.