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

Abstract

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.

Economic Spatial Structure in China: Evidence from Railway Transport Network

“…These studies fall into three classifications: (i) those focusing on the structure of the railway transport network [25,26]; this type of research aims to analyze how the characteristics of the railway network change during its upgrade, and the frequently used indices includes the alpha index, gamma index, beta index, and the diameter of the network; (ii) studies focusing on how railway upgrading impacts the accessibility or connectivity of cities or regions; HSR can improve accessibility to the areas along the line, but its degree of influence varies with the location, scale, and basis of development of a given region or city [27][28][29]; (iii) the third line of research focuses on how HSR impacts regional economic development [30,31]; however, there is still no consensus. Among those studies, some hold that HSR promotes an increase in population, employment, gross domestic product (GDP) and local budgets [32][33][34] and has a positive effect on the coordinated development of the regional economy [35][36][37], but some hold the opposite or neutral view [38][39][40]. The impact of HSR on the economic disparity is also controversial.…”

Analysis of Coupling Coordination Relationship between the Accessibility and Economic Linkage of a High-Speed Railway Network Case Study in Hunan, China

“…The construction of high-speed railways improves overall regional accessibility and it significantly benefits areas that are situated along the route; however, it also increases regional imbalances [18]. In terms of urban agglomerations, high-speed railways can effectively promote the regional integration of urban clusters [19][20][21]. There are many ways to measure accessibility, such as grid accessibility [22], weighted average travel time [23,24], the cumulative opportunity measure [25], and the gravity model [26,27].…”

Does High-Speed Railway Promote High-Quality Development of Enterprises? Evidence from China’s Listed Companies

“…As an essential part of transportation infrastructure [1], the HSR plays an instrumental role in global economic, social, and environmental development [2][3][4], as well as the changes in the regional development pattern [5,6]. Ahlfeldt and Feddersen empirically found that the HSR connecting Cologne and Frankfurt (Germany) increased the GDP of the passing county by 8.5% [7].…”