scholarly journals The Impacts of High-Speed Rail on Regional Accessibility and Spatial Development—Updated Evidence from China’s Mid-Yangtze River City-Cluster Region

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4227
Author(s):  
Liwen Liu ◽  
Ming Zhang

There has been long and ongoing interest in the impacts of high-speed rail (HSR) on regional spatial development. Most existing studies, however, reported findings at relatively coarse geographic scales, i.e., at the prefecture-city or above level in the Chinese context. This paper presents the empirical evidence of HSR impacts from the county-level cities in China’s Mid-Yangtze River City-Cluster Region (MYRCCR). The study utilized rail time data and the socio-economic data for MYRCCR’s 185 county-level cities in the years of 2006 (without HSR) and 2014 (with HSR) and analyzed the impacts of HSR on inter-city travel times, accessibility, spatial inequality, and regional economic linkages among the MYRCCR cities. The results show that, from 2006 to 2014, HSR reduced city-to-city average travel time by 34.5% or 124 min and improved accessibility to all cities in the MYRCCR. HSR’s impacts on accessibility and spatial equality exhibited a scale-differentiated pattern. MYRCCR-wide, HSR transformed a pattern of spatial polarization towards the one of corridorization. Cities located on major HSR corridors became more balanced in 2014 than in 2006. Nevertheless, at the county-city level, the gap between cities with the most and the least accessibility gains was much greater than the gap between those with the largest and the smallest travel time savings. Attributable to HSR services, the intensity of economic linkage increased between MYRCCR cities, especially between the provincial capital cities and those on the major lines of the national HSR grid, which implies an emerging process towards territorial cohesion in MYRCCR. National, provincial, and local governments should consider transportation as well as non-transportation policies and measures to direct HSR impacts towards further enhanced spatial development and regional equality.

Author(s):  
Cindy Tse ◽  
Jessie Wang ◽  
Jinhua Zhao

This paper focuses the current and potential impact of Huning High Speed Railway (H-N HSR) on commuting patterns in the Yangtze River Delta region. We will examine 1) to what extent commuting via HSR is occurring, since the HSR system is very new and is a substantial and long-term decision for people to move for a job or home across cities; 2) the future potential of commuting via the HSR perceived by current HSR passengers to relocate for a job or relocate their home and their preferences in terms of target cities of jobs and housing relocations; and 3) the areas in the HSR system required for improvement in order to enable a smooth commuting experience across cities, including affordability of the HSR tickets, the comparison between the maximum tolerable travel time with the actual door-to-door travel time, and various aspects of integration between HSR and intra-urban transportation systems.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6456
Author(s):  
Ziqi Liu ◽  
Ming Zhang ◽  
Liwen Liu

There have been growing concerns around the world over the rising spatial inequality (SI) amid fast and vast globalization. This paper presents an effort to benchmark the conditions and trends of spatial inequality in 37 megaregions in the United States, Europe, and China. Furthermore, the study selected three megaregion examples and analyzed the effect of developing high-speed rail (HSR) as an infrastructure investment strategy on reshaping the spatial pattern of job accessibility. The study measures spatial inequality with the Theil index of gross regional product and with the rank-size coefficient of polycentricity. Results show that spatial inequality exists and varies in magnitude within and between megaregions. On average, Chinese megaregions exhibited the level of spatial inequality about two times or more of those in the U.S. and European megaregions. The decade between 2006 and 2016 saw a decrease in the Theil index measure of megaregional inequality in China, but a slight increase in the United States and Europe. Fast growing megaregions exhibit high levels and rising trends of spatial inequality regardless of the country or continent setting. HSR helps improve mobility and accessibility; yet the extent to which HSR reduces spatial inequality is context dependent. This study presents a first attempt to assess and compare the spatial inequality conditions and trajectories in world megaregions aiming at promoting international learning.


Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zheng Chang ◽  
Mi Diao

This study analyses the changes in intra-city housing values in response to improved inter-city connection brought by high-speed rail (HSR), using the opening of the Hangzhou–Fuzhou–Shenzhen Passenger Dedicated Line (HFSL) in Shenzhen, China, as an example. The opening of the HFSL and its integration into the local metro network at Shenzhen North Station provide exogenous intra-city variations in access to the surrounding economic mass. With a difference-in-differences approach, we find that the HFSL showed a negative local effect as housing values declined by 11.5%–13.3% in the proximity of Shenzhen North Station relative to areas further from the station after the opening, possibly due to the negative externalities of the HFSL. The HFSL effect can spread along the metro network and lead to, on average, a 7% appreciation of housing values around metro stations (network effect). The direction and strength of the network effect vary by metro travel time between Shenzhen North Station and metro stations. Housing values decreased by 7.7% around metro stations within 5–15 minutes of metro travel time but increased by 63.6%, 16.6% and 29.2% around metro stations within 15–25, 25–35 and 35–45 minutes of metro travel time to Shenzhen North Station, respectively. The HFSL effect on housing values diminishes when the rail travel time is above 45 minutes. We interpret these findings as evidence of the redistribution effect in the city related to HSR connection.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dewei Li ◽  
Shishun Ding ◽  
Yizhen Wang

Train timetabling is crucial for passenger railway operation. Demand-oriented train timetable optimization by minimizing travel time plays an important role in both theory and practice. Most of the current researches of demand-oriented timetable models assume an idealized situation in which the service order is fixed and in which zero overtaking exists between trains. In order to extend the literature, this paper discusses the combinatorial effect of service order and overtaking by developing four mixed-integer quadratic programming timetabling models with different service order as well as overtaking conditions. With the objective of minimizing passengers’ waiting time and in-vehicle time, the models take five aspects as constraints, namely dwell time, running time, safety interval, overtaking, and capacity. All four models are solved by ILOG CPLEX; and the results, which are based on Shanghai-Hangzhou intercity high-speed rail data, show that either allowing overtaking or changing service order can effectively optimize the quality of timetable with respect to reducing the total passengers’ travel time. Although optimizing train overtaking and service order simultaneously can optimize the timetable more significantly, compared to overtaking, allowing the change of service order can help passengers save total travel time without extending the train travel time. Moreover, considering the computation effort, satisfying both of the conditions in the meantime, when optimizing timetable has not got a good cost benefit.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Dingjun Chen ◽  
Sihan Li ◽  
Junjie Li ◽  
Shaoquan Ni ◽  
Xiaolong Liu

Timetable optimization techniques offer opportunity for saving energy and hence reducing operational costs for high-speed rail services. The existing energy-saving timetable optimization is mainly concentrated on the train running state adjustment and the running time redistribution between two stations. Not only the adjustment space of timetables is limited, but also it is hard for the train to reach the optimized running state in reality, and it is difficult to get feasible timetable with running time redistribution between two stations for energy-saving. This paper presents a high-speed railway energy-saving timetable based on stop schedule optimization. Under the constraints of safety interval and stop rate, with the objective of minimizing the increasing energy consumption of train stops and the shortest travel time of trains, the high-speed railway energy-saving timetable optimization model is established. The fuzzy mathematics programming method is used to design an efficient algorithm. The proposed model and algorithm are demonstrated in the actual operation data of Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway. The results show that the total operating energy consumption of the train is reduced by 3.7%, and the total travel time of the train is reduced by 11 minutes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (17) ◽  
pp. 9527
Author(s):  
Kyujin Lee ◽  
Woojin Kim ◽  
Junghan Baek ◽  
Junghwa Kim

In this study, the factors influencing the choice of the type of urban railroad transportation in the metropolitan areas of Korea were analyzed. As the populations of metropolitan areas are expanding, the importance of rail transportation, which has a high travel reliability in terms of travel time, has increased, and various types of railroad systems have emerged accordingly. This study was focused on the choice behavior of travelers on local and express trains that use the same track and differ only in the number of stations and operating times. To compare the choice behavior of travelers between local and express trains, factors such as the waiting time on the platform and the in-car travel time were considered. We also investigated the system choice behavior for an existing express subway and high-speed rail trains in tunnels at a great depth in terms of horizontal access time (walking), vertical access time, in-vehicle travel time, and travel fare. For a high-speed rail built underground at a great depth of 50 m, the stated preference survey was designed, and data were collected in consideration of the Great Train Express being promoted in the Seoul metropolitan area by the Korean government. The results of this study are expected to be considered important data for improving the rail system design from the user’s perspective to increase the demand for urban rail transportation in metropolitan areas.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document