Impact of Bridge Construction on County Population in Georgia

Past research shows that the construction of new infrastructure accelerates economic growth in the region by attracting more people and commodities. However, the previous studies only considered large-scale infrastructures such as sea-cross bridges and channel tunnels. There is a paucity of literature on regional infrastructure and its impact on socio-economic indicators. This paper explores the impact of new bridge construction on the human population, particularly focusing on regional bridges constructed during the 2000s in the state of Georgia. The human population at a county level was selected as a single socio-economic factor to be evaluated. A total of 124 cases were investigated as to whether the emergence of a new bridge affected the population change. The interrupted time series analysis was used to statistically examine the significance of population change due to the construction by treating each new bridge as an intervention event. The results show that, out of the 124 cases, the population of 67 cases significantly increased after the bridge construction, while the population of 57 cases was not affected by the construction at a significance level of 0.05. The 124 cases were also analyzed by route type, functional class, and traffic volume, but the results revealed, unlike large-scale infrastructure, that no clear evidence was found that a new bridge would bring an increase in the human population at a county level.