A methodology for prioritising HSR corridors: from U.S. theory to Spanish practice

The assessment of methodologies to prioritise the construction of new high-speed rail (HSR) corridors has recently become a key issue for transport planners in countries like the U.S., where HSR does not exist. In a climate of financial instability since the onset of the global crisis of 2007–2008, support for new projects is being eroded by serious concerns over the extremely steep costs of high-speed rail, and there is a need for the scientific clarification of the procedure for prioritizing construction.In 2009 a new ranking methodology was developed and applied to 30,000 city pairs in the U.S. to determine their suitability for high-speed rail investment. The existing literature on ranking tools for prioritising HSR corridors is practically non-existent, and, as none of these U.S. lines has been built or put into in operation, this methodology has not been validated. The main aim of this paper is to contribute to these ranking models and highlight their importance in the HSR planning process. The preliminary ranking tool described in this work has been validated using data from the current HSR Spanish network. The results confirm the consistency of the model as a first approach to ranking pairs, mainly for the top O–D relations; however the model has some drawbacks chiefly due to the type of variables used, and their assigned weightings. Finally, some specific improvements are proposed for this ranking approach in order to provide policymakers with a useful tool when planning the construction of new HSR networks.     

Territorial cohesion impacts of high-speed rail under different zoning systems

Large-scale transport infrastructure projects such as high-speed rail (HSR) produce significant effects on the spatial distribution of accessibility. These effects, commonly known as territorial cohesion effects, are receiving increasing attention in the research literature. However, there is little empirical research into the sensitivity of these cohesion results to methodological issues such as the definition of the limits of the study area or the zoning system. In a previous paper (Ortega et al., 2012), we investigated the influence of scale issues, comparing the cohesion results obtained at four different planning levels. This paper makes an additional contribution to our research with the investigation of the influence of zoning issues. We analyze the extent to which changes in the size of the units of analysis influence the measurement of spatial inequalities.The methodology is tested by application to the Galician (north-western) HSR corridor, with a length of nearly 670 km, included in the Spanish PEIT (Strategic Transport and Infrastructure Plan) 2005–2020. We calculated the accessibility indicators for the Galician HSR corridor and assessed their corresponding territorial distribution. We used five alternative zoning systems depending on the method of data representation used (vector or raster), and the level of detail (cartographic accuracy or cell size). Our results suggest that the choice between a vector-based and raster-based system has important implications. The vector system produces a higher mean accessibility value and a more polarized accessibility distribution than raster systems. The increased pixel size of raster-based systems tends to give rise to higher mean accessibility values and a more balanced accessibility distribution. Our findings strongly encourage spatial analysts to acknowledge that the results of their analyses may vary widely according to the definition of the units of analysis.     

High speed rail effects on tourism: Spanish empirical evidence derived from China's modelling experience

China and Spain are currently among the top tourist destinations, coming third and fourth place in the 2014 world ranking of tourist arrivals, behind France and the US. Tourism is crucial for the economies of Spain and China, and both countries have the longest high speed rail (HSR) networks in the world. What role has HSR infrastructure played in the development of tourism in both countries?Little research has been done to date, even in Europe, to estimate empirically how tourism indicators are affected by new HSR lines. In 2012 a multivariate panel analysis by Chen and Haynes was applied to 27 Chinese regions, and confirmed that emerging high speed rail services (during the period 1999–2010) had significant positive impacts on boosting tourism in China. No similar empirical tool has ever been tested in Europe.The aim of this paper is to analyse and validate this tool when applied to the Spanish context, and to develop a comparative analysis with the Chinese case study. The methodology is applied to 47 Spanish provinces during the period 1999–2015, and the results clearly reveal a positive but lower-value link (compared to China) between the increase in certain tourism outputs (foreign arrivals and revenues) and HSR network construction. However, further research is needed into the model's limitations, namely the availability of suitable tourism indicators in the official databases, the HSR explanatory variables considered, and the ability to detect “circular cause-effects” between HSR and tourism.     

Some stylized facts about high-speed rail: A review of HSR experiences around the world

After collecting information on 166 high-speed rail (HSR) projects across the world, this paper examines some of the most relevant empirical issues related to the implementation of this transport technology in recent years. We firstly discuss the economic definition of HSR, trying to identify its different development and operating models. Then, we provide what could be considered as a range of actual cost values of building and maintaining a high-speed rail infrastructure. A similar analysis is carried out regarding the operating and maintenance costs of high-speed rail services. Some information on external costs is also provided. We finally deal with current demand and its projections, and try to draw some inferences about its future evolution.     

Environmental risk perception and public trust—from planning to operation for China's high-speed railway

China has the world's largest high-speed railway (HSR) network, but while HSR is meeting high transportation demand, the Decide-Announce-Defend approach to infrastructure policy and projects still prevails in China and is often criticized for not addressing public concerns of environmental and social risks. In recent years, researchers have investigated the economic and environmental impacts of HSR, yet few studies have evaluated the public's views on HSR risks or their views on the trustworthiness of key information sources, which are believed to be critical in predicting public behavior and reaction to infrastructure projects. Using random survey data from communities along the Beijing-Shenyang and Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway lines, our study shows that perceived risks of HSR are higher in the operating stage rather than during construction. We also find that in the construction stage, risk-related information is often obtained through informal channels, while the government becomes a more trusted information provider only after HSR goes into operation. Furthermore, we confirm that the public's perception of the level of knowledge, transparency, and attention to risk of the information sources¹¹ These are broad terms used in the survey to refer to information sources' general level of environmental knowledge, level of transparency with the decision-making process and information disclosure, and level of concern for environmental risks perceived by the public.View all notes are key determinants of their perceived trustworthiness. Lastly, this study reveals that socioeconomic characteristics are more important than project phase in explaining the regional differences in risk perception and trustworthiness of key information sources. This key finding calls for a strategy of stakeholder engagement that is carefully tailored to the demographics of the affected population in the decision-making and implementation process of HSR, as well as other infrastructure projects.     

Improving interchanges in China: the experiential phenomenon

This paper examines the development of multimodal passenger rail hubs as part of the high-speed rail (HSR) network in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The instrumental, attitudinal and affective experience of the journey through the interchange is assessed from the user perspective. Surveys are used from three HSR stations: Beijing South, Chengdu East and Suzhou North (N = 150), representing three types of HSR stations, i.e. national capital, regional capital and sub-regional city. ‘Expected’ and ‘realised’ facilities are compared – with the difference representing the ‘disgruntlement’ factor (after Stradling et al., 2007).The unprecedented urbanisation process currently being witnessed in the PRC, together with the rapid development of the HSR network and associated multimodal interchanges, offers much opportunity to develop a leading-edge public transport system and urban development predicated on the use of public transport. Although the importance of intermodal interchange hubs is being increasingly recognised, the journey experience through the interchange often remains poor, with problems including Wi-Fi availability, waiting and seating, the availability of door-to-door ticketing, crowdedness, access to the hub, time of travel through and waiting in the hub. MANOVA analysis and factorial (three way) MANOVA analysis are used to explore the differences between intermodal hubs, with many instrumental and particularly attitudinal and affective factors being significantly influenced by location.     

The effects of tourism on HSR: Spanish empirical evidence derived from a multi-criteria corridor selection methodology

The exorbitant cost of new High-Speed Rail (HSR) lines requires a selection methodology to define which HSR corridors within a network should be built first, and the most suitable evaluation tool appears to be the multi-criteria approach. In any corridor-ranking methodology, and especially in countries with high tourism attractiveness, tourism impacts on HSR should be considered as a variable.In addition to economic geography and destination choice models, the current literature on tourism demand is dominated by econometric models using a single-equation time-series based approach. However little research has been done so far on methodologies to rank HSR corridors taking into account the tourism variable. In 2014, a ranking methodology developed by Todorovich and Hagler was validated using the current Spanish HSR network. Twelve variables were used to create an index to assign scores to the city pairs, but tourism was not included as a variable. The findings showed the consistency of the model for ranking pairs mainly in the top O–D relations; however the tool failed to discriminate clearly between secondary groups of corridors.The aim of this paper is to assess empirically the positive effect of tourism on HSR and to enhance the abovementioned ranking tool with a tourism database. The new methodology is tested by application to 1176 city pairs in Spain, and the results clearly show that the implementation of a tourism variable helps discriminate between secondary groups of corridors and offers a more effective approach for determining the implications of tourism on HSR.     

Corridors,hybrids and networks: three global development strategies for high speed rail

After 50 years of experience with high-speed rail (HSR) development in Asia and Europe, there are important lessons that can be derived to inform future efforts to introduce HSR. This paper identifies and explores three strategic models of HSR development: (1) exclusive corridors (e.g., Japan), (2) hybrid networks—both national (e.g., France and Germany) and international (e.g., European Union), and (3) comprehensive national networks (e.g., China and Spain). Evaluations of these models yield outcomes that range from generally positive assessments of the corridor and national hybrid models to more concerns and uncertainties about the international hybrid and comprehensive national network models. When applying these lessons to the United States, contextual differences can make direct applications problematic. At the same time, though, certain elements of these three models that have been proven to be successful elsewhere may be adaptable to the U.S. and other newcomers to HSR development.     

Integration of HSR and air transport: Understanding passengers’ preferences

Different solutions for the integration of high-speed rail (HSR) and air transport could be implemented, ranging from very basic integration to more sophisticated systems which include ticket and handling integration. A discrete choice experiment is conducted to better understand passengers’ preferences. We estimate a number of flexible choice models, taking into account the existence of systematic and random taste heterogeneity. We obtain a range of willingness-to-pay values for service quality attributes, finding some important results that can be used to infer policy conclusions about the real attractiveness of the Air–HSR integrated alternative. In this respect, we find that schedule coordination which reduces connecting time will be crucial.     

Constructing a mixed-logit model with market positioning to analyze the effects of new mode introduction

This study aims to investigate how the introduction of high-speed rail (HSR) influences traveler choice behavior and the market structure in the western corridor of Taiwan. A new mixed-logit model with factor decomposition is constructed to analyze the market positioning of the existing modes and HSR; the data is collected using the stated preference method. The empirical results show that travel cost is the major factor in market positioning. After the introduction of HSR, travelers’ mode preference did not change, whereas locations across modes on the market-positioning map as well as some coefficients of the explanatory variables changed.     

Measuring the substitution effects between High Speed Rail and air transport in Spain

The main objective of this paper is to estimate the impact that the expansion of the HSR network has had on air transport in Spain by estimating the substitution effect between the two types of transportation. This paper considers the way that the HSR network has grown and how this growth could have affected air transport dynamically. The findings show that a dynamic vision of this substitution rate should be adopted, as opposed to assuming that the rate is constant, as has been the case in previous references. Although the rate varies significantly over the study period, only 13.9% of HSR passenger demand was found to have come from air travel during the 1999–2012 period, meaning that HSR and airlines would seem to offer more independent services than at first it might appear. This confirms the hypothesis as to the HSR’s great ability to generate its own demand. The substitution rate between the two transport modes seems to be closely linked to the way that any new stations are incorporated into the HSR network. Convergence between the seasonality of HSR and air transport has also been examined. The results show that it is difficult to talk of a real HSR transport network in Spain.     

Assessing High-Speed Rail’s impacts on land cover change in large urban areas based on spatial mixed logit methods: a case study of Madrid Atocha railway station from 1990 to 2006

This paper proposes an accessibility-based spatial mixed logit (SML) model with panel data structure to examine the impacts of High-Speed Rail (HSR) on land cover change in large urban areas. Using data between 1990 and 2006, impacts of the Spanish HSR on Madrid’s Atocha railway station influence area – a 20 km radius buffer centred on the station – were investigated. To model the HSR impacts, besides socioeconomic variables, the development of both local and regional transportation networks with corresponding accessibility improvement is also taken into account to segregate the impacts of land-cover change brought by different sources of accessibility measures. In this study, two SML models are used: one incorporates regional accessibility indicators as a base model, and the other does not, acting as a control model. The model estimation results reveal that the reduction of the local and regional weighted travel average time has positive impacts on the Atocha station catchment area’s urbanised land-cover rates. Although the base and control models both achieve high goodness-of-fit values, the base model that considers regional accessibility reveals a better goodness-of-fit statistic and is more robust than the control model. It is concluded that the improvement of regional accessibility due to the arrival of HSR at Atocha station plays an essential role in the urbanisation of land cover changes in the study area.     

Impacts on accessibility of China’s present and future HSR network

Although the construction of China’s high-speed rail (HSR) network only started in 2003, the network is already the largest in the world. This paper analyses the impact of the evolving HSR network on the accessibility by HSR and conventional ground transport of 333 prefecture-level cities and 4 municipalities. This paper employs three indicators of accessibility, and analyses three Scenarios. It shows that the HSR network will bring about substantial improvement in accessibility, and lead to national time–space convergence, but will also increase the inequality of nodal accessibility between eastern, central, and western regions, between cities with different sizes of population (excluding the case of the daily accessibility indicator) and between cities that differ in the shortest distance to HSR stations. The HSR network enlarges internal disparities in each of the regions and the five types of cities. The internal inequality of nodal accessibility in all three Scenarios generally increases from the eastern region via the central region to the western region, as well as from very large cities to small cities, varying inversely with the level of economic development and population size. Spatially, accessibility increases generally conform to the distance decay rule but with minor fluctuations. The 50 cities with the largest increases in accessibility are mostly located 50 km or less away from HSR stations and have populations of over 3 million, with the smaller ones located along HSR lines or around large cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. As time progresses, the planned HSR network will result in more balanced development, but regional disparities in accessibility will still be greater than before the construction of the HSR.     

Using accessibility indicators and GIS to assess spatial spillovers of transport infrastructure investment

This paper proposes a methodology to measure spatial spillovers of transport infrastructure investment and to monetize them by distributing the costs of the infrastructures envisaged according to the regional distribution of the potential accessibility benefits. We use a transport master plan (the Spanish “Plan Estratégico de Infraestructuras y Transporte” 2005–2020, PEIT) as a case study for applying our methodology. In order to calculate and map regional spillovers, economic potential values are computed using network routines in a Geographic Information System (GIS) by comparing two scenarios: firstly, the scenario PEIT 2020; and secondly the scenario which includes the improvements envisaged for the year 2020 in all the regions except the region whose spillover effects are being analyzed. The differences between these two scenarios represent the potential spatial spillover effects of this region on the rest of the regions. This procedure is repeated for each of the Spanish regions in order to calculate a matrix of inter-regional spillovers in economic potential units. In a second step, this matrix is monetized by distributing the costs of the investment in infrastructures envisaged in the region according to the regional distribution of the economic potential benefits. This inter-regional matrix of investments flows characterizes the “inner”, “export”, and “import” values of each of the regional road investments. Subtracting from the direct investment the exports to other regions and adding the imports from other regions, an estimation of the real investment of the plan in each region taking into account all the spillover effects is obtained. This value can be compared with the direct investment in the region, analyzing whether one region has more or less direct investment than real. The proposed methodology makes it transparent which regions benefit more from national transport investment irrespective of where the investment occurs. The spillover matrix can be a valid instrument, especially in federal states or in the case of transnational projects, in the field of regional economics because it offers very useful information for both planners and policy makers.     

Impact of high-speed rail on regional economic disparity in China

This paper investigates a fundamental question related to the massive railway infrastructure development in China. What is the impact of high-speed rail (HSR) on regional economic disparity? The question is investigated from three perspectives. First, the influence of HSR on regional economic disparity is discussed theoretically from the perspective of New Economic Geography. Second, the variation in economic disparity at both the national and regional levels is investigated using three indexes: the weighted coefficient of variation, the Theil index and the Gini index. Third, the linkages between regional economic growth and HSR is measured empirically from a quantitative and qualitative perspective using an endogenous growth modelling framework with a panel data covering the period 2000–2014. The rail network density is adopted as a proxy to reflect the quantity change in rail investment. Three accessibility indicators (weighted average travel time, potential accessibility and daily accessibility) are introduced to capture the improvement of HSR transport quality. Our findings confirm that regional economic disparity has been decreased since the development of HSR. HSR has promoted regional economic convergence in China. Specifically, the positive effect of rail network density on regional economic growth is found to be significant in the East and North, whereas the positive effect of accessibility change is found to be more significant in the Middle Reaches of Yangtze River, the Southwest and the South China.     

Long-distance trips in a sparsely populated region: The impact of high-speed infrastructures

This paper aims to analyze the different territorial performance of two new high-speed transport infrastructures, a national motorway and a high-speed rail (HSR) line, with an emphasis on their different roles on long-distance trip making, in a peripheral and sparsely populated province of Spain, contributing to the existing limited research on the influence of high-speed transport infrastructures on urban structure and mobility of sparsely populated regions.The paper provides empirical evidence by means of a mobility survey. The analysis of modal split, travel frequencies, and travel purposes allows a better understanding of long-distance mobility patterns and establishes different travel profiles. The study of commuting and discretionary flows shows different levels and types of metropolitan integration depending on the type of connection and on local characteristics.     

Impacts of high-speed rail on domestic air transportation in China

This study investigates the impacts of high-speed rail (HSR) on domestic air transportation in China using a new comprehensive modeling framework utilizing both demand and supply perspectives. For the first time the assessment was conducted using an improved panel regression model by taking into account of the detailed opening schedules of various HSR services during the period 2001–2014. The research findings reveal that the deployed HSR services have a significant substitutional effect on domestic air transportation in China, but the effect varies across different HSR routes, travel distance and city type. Specifically, the research found a decrease in domestic passengers of 28.2%, in flights of 24.6% and in seat capacity of 27.9% after the introduction of HSR services. The impacts are found much stronger among those air routes that connect major hub within a distance range of 500 to 800 km. The uneven nature of the impact can be seen in the different experiences of selected cities. For example, air travel declined approximately 45% after commencement of the Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR, whereas it fell by 34% after the opening of the Beijing-Shanghai HSR.     

Environmental benefits of air–rail intermodality: The example of Madrid Barajas

The environmental impact of transport is a growing issue in transport infrastructure planning. The construction of a high-speed rail station at the Madrid Barajas Airport in Spain is an example of the integration of different transportation modes, with expected environmental benefits. We construct a model to assess modal choice and environmental benefits. The results show that with high-speed rail the number of people choosing air travel and the private car is reduced leading to important environmental benefits: a reduction of close to 5 kg of CO₂ per passenger, or 10% of all emissions on the corridor. Our results also show that increasing the cost of using the private car is picked up by air transport rather than high-speed rail, leading to an increase in total emissions.     

Competition and cooperation between high-speed rail and air transportation services in Europe

New high-speed rail (HSR) lines may have an enormous influence on the provision of air services. The attention has been devoted to competition between both transportation modes but in some cases HSR services may also have an intermodal complementary role with air transportation. By taking a supply oriented empirical analysis, we study the impact of HSR on air service frequencies and seats offered by airlines in large European countries. We emphasize the distinction between routes with and without a hub airport as an endpoint and we also examine the influence of the location of the HSR station. We generally find direct competition between HSR and airlines, but we also provide some evidence that HSR can provide feeding services to long haul air services in hub airports, particularly in hub airports with HRS stations.     

Spain's airport infrastructure: adaptations to liberalization and privatization

This paper gives an overview of Spanish airports and their traffic and identifies Spain's infrastructure needs. The advantages and disadvantages of public and private management of airports in Spain are discussed. Moreover, key legislative reforms are suggested in anticipation of the structural and administrative changes needed to permit private investment in the development of Spain's airports. Investment proposals for the busiest Spanish airports are examined, including handling services. To conclude, global trends in the development of airport infrastructures are compared with those shaping the present and future growth of Spanish airports.