Geographical Variations in Transport Costs of Manufacturing Firms in Great Britain

Abstract

The authors examine the extent to which there are geographical variations in transport costs for manufacturing firms in Great Britain. A new methodology is adopted which provides important new insights and which avoids many of the limitations of earlier work. The research presents a new index of transport accessibility for different types of industry by a thirty area disaggregation in Great Britain and translates the accessibility measure into an index of economic cost using up-to-date information provided by the Road Hauliers Association. Overall the research gives some support to the findings of earlier work on the size of variations in transport costs at the level of standard region in Great Britain, but finds significant sub-regional variation.