Combined impacts of highways and light rail transit on residential property values: a spatial hedonic price model for Phoenix,Arizona

This study analyzes the positive and negative relationships between housing prices and proximity to light rail and highways in Phoenix, Arizona. We hypothesize that the accessibility benefits of light rail transit (LRT) and highways accrue at nodes (stations and highway exits specifically), while disamenities emanate from rail and highway links as well as from nodes. Distance decay of amenities and disamenities is captured using multiple distance bands, and hypotheses are tested using a spatial hedonic model using generalized spatial two-stage least-squares estimation. Results show that proximity to transport nodes was associated significantly and positively with single-family detached home values. As a function of distance from highway exits and LRT stations, the distance-band coefficients form an inverted-U pattern consistent with a positive longer-range distance–decay accessibility effect minus a smaller and shorter-range distance–decay disamenity effect. The positive accessibility effect for highway exits extends farther than for LRT stations. Coefficients for the distance from highway and LRT links, however, were not significant. We also test the effect of highway design on home values and find that below-grade highways have relatively positive impacts on nearby houses compared to those at ground level or above.     

Spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the impact of high-speed railway on urban economy: Empirical study of Chinese cities

The relationship between high-speed railway (HSR) construction and economic development has become a significant concern in recent decades. This study uses the spatiotemporal panel data of China's HSR construction and economic development from 2008 to 2018 as bases to discuss the spatial–temporal heterogeneity of the relationship between HSR and the urban economy. Firstly, this research measures the accessibility of different dimensions (i.e. location accessibility, potential accessibility and daily accessibility), and assesses the regional disparity of HSR accessibility and urban GDP using the Gini index. Secondly, the direct and indirect effects of HSR on economic development are analyzed from the global perspective by using the spatial Durbin model. Lastly, the geographically and temporally weighted regression model is applied to assess the spatial–temporal heterogeneity of the correlation between HSR and economic development from a local perspective. The conclusions are as follows. (1) The construction of HSR might reduce the regional disparity of daily accessibility, but expand the disparity of potential accessibility and location accessibility. (2) From a global perspective, HSR has a significant positive impact on urban economic development, but this impact was mainly produced by the spillover effect and not the direct effect. Specifically, the smaller the spatial–temporal distance between cities, the higher the level of regional integration and the better the economic development of cities. (3) The HSR impact on urban economic growth has a periodic feature. The stimulation of large-scale railway construction will expand the economic effect of HSR, although network improvement will gradually converge the corresponding impact. (4) From a local perspective, the HSR impact on economic development has significant spatial heterogeneity. Although HSR has a certain inhibitory effect on the economic development of Eastern China, it has a positive impact on the economic growth of the western region.     

Accessibility modelling: predicting the impact of planned transport infrastructure on accessibility patterns in Edinburgh,UK

The achievement of good spatial accessibility and equity in the distribution of urban services is one of the supreme goals for urban planners. With Scottish Government backing, the City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) has started to construct a tram network to cater for the future needs of Scotland’s capital city by providing an integrated transport solution using trams and buses. Spatial Network Analysis of Public Transport Accessibility (SNAPTA) which is a GIS-based accessibility model has been developed to measure the accessibility by public transport to different urban services and activities. The model responds to several limitations in other existing accessibility models in planning practice. It offers an alternative and practical tool to help planners and decision makers in examining the strengths and weaknesses of land use – transport integration. SNAPTA has been applied to a pilot study in Edinburgh city to identify the contribution of the infrastructure improvements of the tram system and Edinburgh South Suburban Railway (ESSR) to improved accessibility by public transport to six types of activity opportunities. This paper outlines the concept and methodology of the SNAPTA model, and presents the findings related to this pilot study with a focus on changes in potential accessibility to jobs between four different public transport network scenarios. The accessibility values so obtained help to identify the gaps in the coverage of the public transport network and the efficiency in the spatial distribution of urban services and activities. The findings focus on whether the planned transport infrastructures for Edinburgh will lead to better accessibility and reduced inequity (in terms of accessibility) across the city.     

The spatial impacts model of trans-strait fixed links: A case study of the Pearl River Delta,China

The mage trans-strait fixed links are constructed in different countries to promote regional economic and social development. This paper proposes a spatial impacts model for the trans-strait fixed links in the Pearl River Delta, China. To verify the rationality of the model, four quantitative indicators, including weighted average travel time, the economic linkage intensity, the economic linkage membership grade, and the fractal index are used to investigate the effect by construction of Humen Bridge, Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge and Shenzhen–Zhongshan Bridge. The results show that the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge and Shenzhen–Zhongshan Bridge greatly improve the regional accessibility with a maximum decrease weighted average travel time of 1.38 h and 0.4 h. The central part of the Delta has greatest impacts. The links increase the economic linkage of cities of each side. The cities directly connected to the fixed links (Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Macao and Zhongshan) experience the highest increasing economic linkage. The regional spatial pattern evolves from unipolarity to multi-polarity and integrates a more advanced and sophisticated spatial network. The theoretical spatial impacts model for the trans-strait fixed links accords with the actual development in the Pearl River Delta.     

Impacts of high-speed rail on the inequality of intercity accessibility: A case study of Liaoning Province,China

The rapid development of Chinese high-speed rail (HSR) not only improves the convenience of daily transportation, but also promotes the regional economy of cities along the HSR lines. Accessibility improvement and spatial inequality reduction caused by HSR would play a positive role in transportation development projects appraisal and help achieve the regional coordinated development. Our purpose is to assess how much improvement of economic potential accessibility can each city get from the HSR based on the existing highway and HSR networks, as well as the changes in spatial disparity and accessibility distribution patterns. Taking Liaoning Province as a case, this paper studies the spatial pattern and inequality of accessibility in two intercity transportation scenarios using a gravity-based model. The sensitivity analysis of the parameter and the test of different mass indicators are also conducted. The results show that cities in the central areas have better accessibility than peripheral areas. Cities in the peripheral areas and near the HSR lines tend to benefit more from HSR. The inequality of accessibility decreases a lot in cities with HSR access but only has a minor reduction on a whole scale.     

Analysing transport corridor policies: An integrative approach to spatial and social disparities in India

Although strategies to create transport corridor are prevalent in the global South, there is a lack of empirical research to evaluate these initiatives, in particular whether they have realised their general goal of reducing regional disparities. The current paper describes a multi-method approach involving spatial and non-spatial analysis to investigate spatial disparity along a proposed corridor and examine its integration within the existing settlement structure. The analytical framework is tested on India’s Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor. A rationale is developed to enable a critical view of corridor policies as strategies for development in the global South.One important finding regarding policies on transport corridors is the risk that future growth will remain concentrated in districts directly linked to a proposed corridor, leaving peripheral areas marginalised. An integrative analysis of current spatial and social disparities in India shows growth to be high in areas with good accessibility between urban and rural areas. Specifically, growth in rural areas is fostered by the availability of good road network, and polytechnic and vocational institutions, whereas in urban areas, growth is positively associated with the provision of secondary schools. In order to prevent or even reduce disparities, this research recommends that spatial strategies be developed with mechanisms to enable their implementation by lower tiers of governments, that spatial plans and infrastructure outlays be reformed to improve accessibility between proposed corridors and peripheral areas, and that accessibility indicators be included in the design and implementation of transport development policies.     

甘肃省高速铁路对城市可达性及经济联系格局影响研究

高速铁路的开通会产生时空压缩效应,使城市之间的平均旅行时间减少,提升城市间经济联系度。借助可达性系数和引力模型,探讨高速铁路开通前后甘肃段城市可达性和经济联系的演变。高速铁路开通后,加权平均旅行时间缩短,甘肃省城市可达性得到提升,形成以兰州-天水-定西为交通中心,沿高速铁路为轴线对外辐射的空间格局趋势;城市之间的经济联系强度大幅度增强,城市间经济联系差异扩大;内部经济联系极化效应加剧,非高速铁路区存在形成交通和经济双重洼地的风险,可达性和经济联系度呈现部分空间耦合。     

Supply chain integration,landside operations and port accessibility in metropolitan Chicago

Seaports have traditionally been the focus of maritime logistics supply chains. Changing production patterns demanding greater end to end visibility by customers and accessibility to key inland population centers assume greater importance in the organization and design of transport resources and cargo flows. While synchronization of all aspects of the supply chain has become an operational necessity for firms, it is often held hostage to the efficiency of hinterland networks who must respond to a large group of stakeholders with sporadic coordination. This is particularly true when looking at the central US city and region of Chicago, a critical intermodal exchange point for truck, air and river barge traffic domestic and global, as well as a major central distribution location. This paper analyzes supply chain integration (SCI) efforts in the metropolitan Chicago region and considers efforts by public and private actors to collaborate for region-wide SCI improvements. Pareto analysis suggests that concentrated freight corridors exist, influencing freight planning for regional transportation networks more directly than diffused regional freight movements. If the corridor service becomes less responsive or congested the corridor will move to different end nodes within the broad region. Regional planning must thus address national, regional, and local moves. Private/public sector infrastructure firms should address functional cooperation on SCI by focusing on corridors as well as local improvements.     

Detecting urban road network accessibility problems using taxi GPS data

Urban population growth and economic development have led to the creation of new communities, jobs and services at places where the existing road network might not cover or efficiently handle traffic. This generates isolated pockets of areas which are difficult to reach through the transport system. To address this accessibility problem, we have developed a novel approach to systematically examine the current urban land use and road network conditions as well as to identify poorly connected regions, using GPS data collected from taxis. This method is composed of four major steps. First, city-wide passenger travel demand patterns and travel times are modeled based on GPS trajectories. Upon this model, high density residential regions are then identified, and measures to assess accessibility of each of these places are developed. Next, the regions with the lowest level of accessibility among all the residential areas are detected, and finally the detected regions are further examined and specific transport situations are analyzed.By applying the proposed method to the Chinese city of Harbin, we have identified 20 regions that have the lowest level of accessibility by car among all the identified residential areas. A serious reachability problem to petrol stations has also been discovered, in which drivers from 92.6% of the residential areas have to travel longer than 30 min to refill their cars. Furthermore, the comparison against a baseline model reveals the capacity of the derived measures in accounting for the actual travel routes under divergent traffic conditions. The experimental results demonstrate the potential and effectiveness of the proposed method in detecting car-based accessibility problems, contributing towards the development of urban road networks into a system that has better reachability and more reduced inequity.     

高速铁路对民族地区旅游发展水平的影响机制研究

高速铁路的开通降低了游客出行的时间和经济成本,影响旅游活动空间集聚规律,形成同城化、网络化等现象。以黔桂云三省39个市州为案例地,采用2010—2019年的面板数据测度地区旅游发展水平并分析其时空演化动态,构建回归模型考察高速铁路影响区域旅游发展水平的效果及作用机制,明确高速铁路在区域旅游经济发展中的作用,为民族地区旅游高质量发展贡献力量。结果显示:高速铁路开通后区域内旅游发展水平普遍提高,并表现出不同的空间态势:贵州以贵阳为中心向四周扩散,云南以旅游发达地区散状分布,而广西呈现出桂林、南宁两核遥望之态;高速铁路通过改善区域旅游可达性实现旅游发展水平的提高,且旅游可达性在民族地区的促进作用中表现为完全中介效应。     

Population growth,accessibility spillovers and persistent borders: Historical growth in West-European municipalities

Lack of cross-border transport supply has repeatedly been blamed for the fact that national borders limit spatial interaction and, consequently, the growth of border regions. This study applies an accessibility approach to investigate for most municipalities in ten countries in mainland West Europe if foreign transport supply is lagging behind, and if population growth in these municipalities has been affected by the limits that national borders have imposed on market access. To do so, data describing historical population changes and road networks between 1961 and 2011 have been used. The results show that in the study area, cross-border transport accessibility was not at a disadvantage in 1961 and has since then grown even more than domestic accessibility. However, municipal population growth has depended almost exclusively on domestic market access. Processes of economic international integration in the study area are found to coincide with the growth of cross-border accessibility, but do not have a clear coincidence with the effects of cross-border accessibility on population growth.     

Twenty years of accessibility improvements. The case of the Spanish motorway building programme

This paper presents an exploratory spatial data analysis of accessibility impacts of a large-scale national motorway building programme. Accessibility is calculated for Spanish municipalities from 1980 to 2000 using two indicators: motorway network access and market potential accessibility. The average distance from municipalities to their nearest motorway has been reduced markedly over this period. Market potential accessibility maps show that there have been gains in all locations, but some of the highest gains occurred in some of the more peripheral regions. A review of the theoretical and empirical literature on the economic impacts of transport investments indicates important implications for regional development.     

Determining intra-urban spatial accessibility disparities in multimodal public transport networks

Urban rail systems have been added to public transport systems, thereby changing distribution disparities in urban spatial accessibility. These disparities reflect both the ability of the public transport system to meet the needs of residents and the locational pros and cons of public service facilities. In this paper, integrated accessibility metrics are used to assess the disparities in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China. This is achieved by dividing the urban space into a multilevel grid that can be easily combined with grid-based population data to facilitate accessibility modeling, calculation, and evaluation. Additionally, an acquisition method for more accurate travel time data in the multimodal public transportation network was developed on the basis of an Internet mapping service. This provides a realistic, multimodal, door-to-door modeling approach that avoids the requirement of building complex traffic networks through Geographic Information System (GIS) software and simplifies road network modeling efforts. The results show that this modeling method can be used to reflect the accessibility disparities in the Nanjing urban space objectively and accurately.     

The impact of the great recession on Irish air travel: An intermodal accessibility analysis

This paper quantifies the changes in accessibility at small area scale arising from the combined effects of dramatic air traffic declines and a greatly expanded motorway network in Ireland during the period of the great recession. The subsequent policy decisions by government are assessed in light of the intermodal accessibility changes identified. The Irish Government engaged in an extensive motorway construction programme throughout the 2000s, greatly increasing the overall length of the inter-urban motorway network. The essential air transport services programme put in place in the 1990s to guarantee a minimum level of air access to disadvantaged regions was significantly reduced at the end of the 2008–2011 period, with only two of the six regional airports continuing to have any form of subsidised public service obligation for the period 2011–2014. In this study, small area datasets are used to measure the net impact of these changes on air transport accessibility in Ireland and the potential spatial inequalities that arise as a result of these changes. An inter-modal accessibility approach is used where the physical characteristics of the road transport network to airports and the network structure characteristics of the air transport system are taken into account to evaluate the levels of air transport accessibility at the small-area district level. Results from the analysis show that the improved surface access to the larger Irish airports (Dublin and Belfast) has enhanced the range of European and global locations directly accessible by air for many communities in Ireland. The net effect of these changes has been to concentrate air traffic at the largest Irish airports.     

Can freeway traffic volume information facilitate urban accessibility assessment?: Case study of the city of St. Louis

In urban contexts, accessibility measures are often utilized to represent the interactions among land use, transport and people’s trips to services and other facilities. Accessibility is generally evaluated using conventional traffic measures such as travel time and distance, but traffic volume, which is a product of the travel trips induced by people’s needs, may also be positively related to accessibility. This study tests the hypothesis “can freeway traffic volume information facilitate urban accessibility assessment?” Traffic volume based accessibility models are proposed to investigate this relationship and test the hypothesis. The results indicate that the answer to this question is a qualified “yes”, as there is a statistically significant relationship between traffic volume differences and accessibility. The coefficients of the models can potentially be used as a reference to guide the urban planning process. The limitations of the proposed models can be addressed by deploying Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) traffic sensors on ramps and arterial roadways.     

日本铁路考察报告——对我国铁路产业及北京城市轨道交通发展方向的一些建议

轨道交通可以压缩时空距离,提升时空价值,实现交通功能与其他功能有机耦合,已成为解决人地关系紧张和＂城市病＂的重要甚至唯一途径。日本经验表明,轨道交通发展重点已从路网扩充向综合枢纽及铁路客站城市方向转移。快速轨道交通要适应城市群连绵成带发展需要,要大力发展通勤铁路和环状线,按照TOD模式实现交通枢纽与土地联合开发,构建铁路车站城市。我国要加强高速铁路和城市轨道交通时空规制,培育铁路文化、铁路精神和铁路意识,构建高速铁路建设触发机制,完善交通枢纽和综合运输规划体制,促进方式间有序竞争,形成财政补贴长效机制,实施计程票制和收益管理制度,优化运营组织,促进我国轨道交通事业可持续发展。     

Bridging the Öresund: potential regional dynamics: Integration of Copenhagen (Denmark) and Malmö–Lund (Sweden) A cross-border project on the European metropolitan level

The construction of the fixed link between Denmark and Sweden will increase the accessibility between South Sweden and East Denmark dramatically. The vision is that the fixed link will span economic, administrative, institutional, technical, cultural and other barriers, and that the two separated urban systems (Greater Copenhagen and Malmö–Lund) can be integrated, opening up for new dynamics. The Öresund (Sound) area has the potential to develop into one functional metropolitan region constituted by flows, markets and terminals. The ambition is to lift Copenhagen to a higher position in the European urban hierarchy by this integration, the instrument being the 16 km long fixed link which will open in the year 2000.     

Impact of new motorway on housing prices in rural North-East Slovenia

The literature generally agrees that improved accessibility has a positive effect on housing values. The motorway constructions in north-eastern Slovenia, completed between 2002 and 2018, significantly improved the accessibility of less developed areas. In this article, we examine how the new motorway has affected the housing values in the mostly rural north-eastern part of Slovenia. We analysed the distance decay effect of amenities and disamenities of motorway links and ramps as well as bus stops, train stations, and railway links on housing prices. In addition to the transport infrastructure variables, we analysed numerous other structural and environmental variables. We estimated three different spatial hedonic regression models: the spatial autoregression model, the spatial error model, and the spatial autocorrelation model.The results indicate that none of proximities to the bus stop, train station, or motorway link have had a significant effect on housing value. However, the rail track proximity exhibited a significant negative association with price. Furthermore, the effect of distance to the nearest motorway ramp on housing value is significant: it is stronger for closer distances (i.e. starting from 500 m) and decreases up to 6 km, while the effect of distances below 500 m is insignificant. Our results also show that bigger dwellings, more rooms, and the presence of a balcony, elevator, central auto heating system, new installation, and air conditioning as well as an apartment in a single house, are associated with a higher housing price. On the contrary, selling the dwellings together with a parking place and basement reduced the average price of the housing property. Comparing our results to the literature, we proved our hypothesis that the negative effect of a motorway is less pronounced in rural areas compared to urban areas and that the positive effect of accessibility is stronger in rural areas and extends over a wider geographical area.     

An econometric analysis of domestic air traffic demand in regional airports: Evidence from India

The Indian aviation industry has a vast potential to grow to cater to its population and commerce through developing air transport services to the regional airports. This paper examines the possible determinants of domestic air traffic demand in Indian regional airports serving below three million passengers per annum. Using multiple regression analysis, we find that distance to the nearest airport and accessibility of the airport significantly affect traffic volumes in regional airports. This study also highlights the specificities of Indian regional airports.     

Planning for sustainable accessibility: The implementation challenge

The ‘Network City’ planning strategy espouses sustainable accessibility. The aim is to re-orient the existing urban structure by focussing development at places with high accessibility in order to support an effective public and private transport system. The implementation phase calls for changes to planning practices: the need for public transport planning and development change to be mutually supportive; the need for road network planning and road design to place land use-transport integration as the core objective rather than traffic efficiency and for the need to stage development according to planned population and employment targets. This must take place within a new participatory approach. All this requires planners to gain new skills. To achieve this the system of planning must remain strong.