Potential Impacts of China 2030 High-Speed Rail Network on Ground Transportation Accessibility

Abstract

Abstract:China has proposed an ambitious high-speed rail (HSR) program by 2030 to connect all provincial capitals (excluding Lhasa) and large cities with more than half million people. Little attention has been paid to evaluate its potential impacts on ground transportation accessibility. To answer this question, we adopted a door-to-door approach to calculate two indicators: the weighted average travel time and daily accessibility. The results show that the HSR network follows the same spatial patterns of population size and regional development, thus preferentially serving eastern China. The two accessibility indicators suggest that the large-scale construction of HSR network by 2030 will substantially improve accessibility and alter the spatial disparities of accessibility. On average, accessibility of all cities will increase by 61.7%. Geographically, cities with higher accessibility are located in the quadrilateral area of 'Wuhan-Zhengzhou-Jinan-Nanjing' on the southeastern section of the 'Hu Line.' While the least accessible cities are distributed in peripheral areas. Although the HSR development can benefit accessibility throughout the country, the disparities of accessibility would widen slightly among regions, provinces and cities.

Chinese High-speed Railway: Efficiency Comparison and the Future

“…In the last Bass diffusion model, concerning highspeed railway network length, it was assumed in the "high" scenario that the network will reach the length of 45,000 km (given in [1]; 1.79 times higher as compared to the realized amount in 2017). Based on the fitted Bass model the network size should be 44,565.7 km in the year 2030.…”

“…The first larger-scale High-speed Railway (HSR) operations started in 2008. In 2003 the first line between Qinhuangdao and Shenyang was opened; [1,2]), and in the late 2013 new ambitious international infrastructure investment program of One Belt and One Road was introduced [3,4]. This latter program contains also a significant involvement of railway industry [5], and not only of building HSR in other countries, but also better freight connections as well as introducing continental landbridge trains directly from the Chinese cities to numerous European ones [6,7].…”

China Controls Business Actors to Implement Belt and Road Initiative as Connectivity Project

“…The Chinese government is targeting the development of high-speed rail innovation over the past two decaddes, because it is followed by an explosion in economic growth. In addition, the Beijing Administration has seen this type of industry as the future of China's economy (Wang, Liu, Mao, & Sun, 2018). The government's attention to the development of railway industry quickly took place in two fundamental conditions, i.e, (1) the central government allocated the Stimulus Package to develop the high-speed rail industry after GFC 2008; and (2) the government influenced the market structure by the number of business actors involved in monopoly and oligopoly.…”

Sustainability Development of High-Speed Rail and Airline—Understanding Passengers’ Preferences: A Case Study of the Beijing–Shanghai Corridor

“…According to the "Railway '13th Five-Year' development plan" [6], a "eight vertical and eight horizontal trunk line" of more than 30,000 km will be constructed by 2020, which will cover more than 45% of air transport routes and 65% of the air transport market. By 2030, the large-scale construction of the HSR network will substantially improve accessibility [7]. Thus, we still expect intense competition between them for many years to come [8], and exploring the sustainability development of HSR and air transport has also become particularly important.…”