Trends and Impacts of Local Access Road Investment in Appalachia: An Evaluation Report of ARC’s Local Access Road Program


Author(s): Youngmin Choi, Ph.D., Post-Doctoral Transportation Fellow, University of Maryland and Paul M. Schonfeld, Ph.D., Professor, University of Maryland
Author Organization(s):

This report presents a study to evaluate trends and impacts of investments in the Appalachian Regional Commission’s Local Access Road (LAR) Program using available project data and surveys conducted in this study covering the projects completed from 2001 through 2020. Information about 135 federally funded LAR projects was obtained from various data sources and classified by project type. Then, online surveys were designed for individual grantees or appropriate stakeholders to verify realized performance measures and learn about the project successes, challenges, and experiences of project implementation. Follow-up in-depth interviews were conducted with selected grantees, which provided more detailed information than the previous surveyed responses and firsthand insights from the grantees or involved stakeholders.