Short- and long-term population and project implications of high-speed rail for served cities: analysis of all served Spanish cities and re-evaluation of Ciudad Real and Puertollano

Abstract

Economic growth theories indicate that infrastructures are necessary but not enough for economic growth, providing the cities they serve with new comparative advantages. Today, 25 years after the first high-speed rail (HSR) services opened in Spain and after a complete economic cycle with the longest-running European HSR network, this network can be treated as a territorial laboratory for testing the relationship between new transport infrastructures and population growth. This article compares the population evolution of Spanish cities with and without HSR services, considering the population of each city as a good indicator of long-term trends. Because the implications of transport investments have, for the most part, been studied only shortly before and after implementation, it is appropriate to re-evaluate these implications from a longer-term perspective. This article compares the population evolution of each HSR city with those of Spain overall, non-HSR municipalities, a random sample of non-HSR cities and similar non-HSR cities. This article also re-evaluates the implications for two small cities served by the first HSR line by means of analyses similar to those undertaken 10-15 years ago to evaluate both the long-term implications and those that are less permanent and have either changed or disappeared. These analyses show that population growth depends on each city's degree of transportation changes, the time elapsed, and the location and size of the city. This article concludes that in the longer term, projects and strategies will be more or less successful depending on their relation to transport. Finally, the article concludes that HSR and non-HSR population comparisons can provide useful general conclusions and that a comparison of HSR cities with similar non-HSR cities yields more specific conclusions.

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

“…A panel data could be constructed by integrating the new socioeconomic and transportation datasets with the 2006/2014 database used in this study. With the updated panel data over a relatively long timeframe, analysts could perform rigorous modeling to improve understanding of the fixed and dynamic effects of HSR investments on the spatial development of city-regions (for example, as the studies done by Li, et al [58] and Coronada, et al [59]). This study did not explore any changes in travel behavior in response to HSR services in MYRCCR.…”

Socioeconomic and Spatial Impacts of High-Speed Rail on Enterprises: An Ex-Ante Case Study of Ahmedabad Station Area, India

“…A total of 43 enterprises consisting of small enterprises (24), medium enterprises (11) and large enterprise (8) from secondary and tertiary industries have been selected as sample size. The selected enterprises were engaged in manufacturing (15), real estate (4), wholesale and retail (3), banking and finance (3), information technology (2), commercial services (2), environmental and sanitation (3), scientific research and technical services (1), transport (2), hotels (3), education (3), and culture and public management (2). The data has been analyzed using descriptive statistics.…”

“…High speed rail (HSR) refers to a passenger train at a designed speed of 250 km/h or more, with a maximum speed of 250 km/h for mixed passenger-freight trains [1]. HSR services generate substantial demonstrable effects in urban economic transition [2] and serve as an alternative to traditional rail [3], aircraft [4], and automobiles [5] due to more efficient use of land for transportation [6]. HSR is one of the major determinants of urbanization [2], economic development [7] and economic growth [8,9].…”

“…HSR services generate substantial demonstrable effects in urban economic transition [2] and serve as an alternative to traditional rail [3], aircraft [4], and automobiles [5] due to more efficient use of land for transportation [6]. HSR is one of the major determinants of urbanization [2], economic development [7] and economic growth [8,9]. HSR plays a significant role in development of agglomeration economies [10], regional economy [11], and local economy [12] through wider economic impact [13][14][15], social impact [16][17][18], and environmental impact [19][20][21] on land use pattern [22], land value [23,24], and revenue generation [25] within urban agglomerations and outside the areas of the HSR network by connecting the neighborhood locations [16], which also depends on buoyancy of the local urban conditions [2,26].…”

“…HSR plays a significant role in development of agglomeration economies [10], regional economy [11], and local economy [12] through wider economic impact [13][14][15], social impact [16][17][18], and environmental impact [19][20][21] on land use pattern [22], land value [23,24], and revenue generation [25] within urban agglomerations and outside the areas of the HSR network by connecting the neighborhood locations [16], which also depends on buoyancy of the local urban conditions [2,26]. HSR improves transportation system [27], increases accessibility [28,29], enhances regional attractiveness and development [30], improves businesses [31,32], fosters new opportunities, modernity and innovation [33], which increase employment growth and boost urban productivity [2] due to time savings [34,35], better market information [26], significant reduction in business cost [34], and agglomeration benefits [7]. Despite high investment in HSR development [36], HSR benefits the regional governments from increase in tax revenue [23,37], tourist inflow [38][39][40][41], and better performance of private investors [42,…”