The Effect of Transport in the Location of the Contemporary Industrial Activities at the 9th Mile Area of Enugu State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated the contributions of transport variables in the location decisions of industrial activities at the 9^th Mile area in order to identify the available transport variables and determine their individual effects in the location of industry in the area. Fifty (50) industries are available in the area and 32 or 64.0% of them were sampled in this study. The study population comprised the management of the 32 industrial plants and the employees selected at 5 from each of the 32 industrial plants. The choice of 5 employees was informed by the fact that Alex Enterprise has only 7 employees and 5 of them were used during the pilot survey. Thus, 32 members of the industrial management and 160 employees formed the study population. They were purposively selected, and the data used were collected through questionnaire, interview, and field observation. One set of questionnaires was set for the respondents involving both structured and unstructured questionnaire. Data from the various methods were merged and analysed using descriptive statistics, standardized percentages, and bar graph techniques. The findings of this study show that transport availability, accessibility, mode, and cost affected location decisions of industry in the area. The modes of transport in use by industry are road, water, and air with road dominating others because only 4 industrial plants (9.4%) in addition to road use water and air transport. The remaining other 28 industrial plants use only road in movement of both raw material and products. Transport accessibility influenced the decision to locate 30 (93.8%) industrial plants in the area.