Bus and train connections between towns in Lower Silesia under different operational models:Competition or complementarity?

Abstract

Relationships between the activities of bus carriers and rail passenger traffic (and the railway offer) are examined in this article. The study was carried out in peripheral areas located at the Polish and Czech borderlands in Lower Silesia province. High quality rail transport generally increases the demand for transport services. Therefore, the proper development of transport offer plays a key role in the functioning of public transport systems, the backbone of which is rail transport. The study also shows that under conditions of transport market deregulation, bus carriers have developed a competitive network which is not complementary to rail transport. As a consequence, the deregulation of the transport market has increased the risk of transport exclusion.

Cross-border public transport between Poland and Czechia and the development of the tourism functions of the region

“…• the locations where means of public transport cross the state border together with the number of services, depending on the season and day of the week; the number of services is a key factor because it is decisive when it comes to the attractiveness of the offer for a potential passenger -the more services departing from a certain stop, the more attractive the given means of transport (Chakour & Eluru, 2016;Smolarski et al, 2019), • the routes of cross-border connections together with their frequency, depending on the season and day of the week (stretches going beyond the chosen borderline area have also been considered in a limited scope), • relating the network of cross-border connections to potential directions of tourists' movements and the degree to which they meet their needs (connections, stopping places, departure times and intervals between services, possibility of return). Railway and bus connections, both local and long-distance, have been taken into account, provided that they have at least one stop on each side of the border within the borderland.…”

“…Among scientific papers, occasional analyses of cross-border connection do occur (Beim & Soczówka, 2016;Graff, 2017a,b;Komornicki, 1994Komornicki, , 1996Komornicki, , 1999Rosik, 2012;Wegener, Komornicki, & Korcelli, 2015), yet they are concerned more with their wider, transregional context, and not so much with their influence on tourism in close proximity to the state border. More detailed research of public transport range in borderland areas is mostly carried out within one country or is of comparative nature Kołodziejczyk, 2013Kołodziejczyk, , 2017bRechłowicz & Soczówka, 2012;Smolarski, 2017;Smolarski, Jurkowski, & Raczyk, 2019;Soczówka, 2013).…”

Przewozy pasażerskie w regionalnym systemie transportu kolejowego w województwie dolnośląskim w 2018 r. = Spatial distribution of passenger flows in a regional system of rail transport. A case study involving Poland’s Dolnośląskie Voivodeship

“…Z punktu widzenia efektywności działania systemu połączeń kolejowych kluczowe staje się rozpoznanie przyczyn tak niskiego wykorzystania kolei na niektórych stacjach. Oprócz elementów związanych z organizacją przewozów istotna jest również konkurencja ze strony przewoźników autobusowych (Smolarski et al, 2019) oraz położenie stacji kolejowej względem sieci osadniczej (por. Jurkowski, 2018;Połom i Tarkowski, 2018).…”

Spatial Analysis of Asymmetry in the Development of Tourism Infrastructure in the Borderlands: The Case of the Bystrzyckie and Orlickie Mountains

“…The problems in obtaining uniform data mean that analyses on the Polish-Czech borderland have, to date, been carried out only to a limited extent-they usually focused on social phenomena, such as demographic phenomena, and unemployment [5,53], for which data are most easily available. Until now, many such studies covered only one side of the border [18,54] and were typically based on qualitative (descriptive) methods [20,25,55,56]. Some analyses focused on showing differences in statistical data from different sources on both sides of the border [57].…”

“…However, these surveys were usually based on the point signatures of the studied events on maps and analyses of their overall structures. For linear infrastructure (e.g., roads, transport services, and tourist routes), simplified network analysis methods have been used [54,60]. Square samples, however, are rarely used in research on borderlands, such as in studies of land cover at the Czech-Austrian frontier [15].…”