Mega Region, High Speed Rail and Urban Reconfiguration

Among the most powerful forces shaping China’s urban transition is a new High-Speed Rail (HSR) network, an ongoing investment project that dramatically improves inter-urban accessibility. HSR will spur the creation of multinucleated urban mega regions.

Although project-level studies of HSR have been conducted to justify investment costs, no integrated spatial and economic studies of HSR have analyzed the network’s local, regional, and country-level impacts on population distribution, economic activities, and land use and price. This has left key questions about the HSR-influenced urban development process unanswered. What are the nature, magnitude, and spatial distribution of HSR’s wider economic impacts? Are these benefits generative, redistributive, or both? What is the direction of redistribution: convergent, distributing resources more equally to all cities, or divergent, distributing resources more towards existing growth poles? To what degree does HSR stimulate urban land development, and how does this affect the real estate market? This project addresses these knowledge gaps with a three-part investigation of HSR’s new patterns of accessibility, its wider economic benefits, and its effects on land and real estate development. Case studies of HSR corridors will be used to compare these effects in cities that vary by size, economic structure, and HSR connectivity.

  • Induction_bus_and_car

    From accessibility improvement to land development: a comparative study on the impacts of Madrid-Seville high-speed rail

    (
    2017
    )

    This paper studies the impacts of Madrid-Seville High-Speed Rail (HSR) on land-cover change in the five HSR connected cities – Madrid, Ciudad Real, Puertollano, Cordoba, and Seville. The analysis period ranges from 1991 to 2006. The study finds that, in the Madrid-Seville region, the land development process concentrates mostly toward the two largest cities, Madrid and Seville, while other smaller HSR served cities are also benefited. The process of land development in each city varies largely. HSR contributes more to Ciudad Real and Cordoba than to Puertollano, with booming urban development in the former two cities. To study the accessibility impacts of HSR, binary discrete choice models are adopted. The results suggest that, the land development in smaller cities can be mainly explained by the improvement of regional accessibility and population growth. However, to model the urban development process in Madrid and Seville, the inputs with only accessibility and population are not sufficient.

  • Induction_bus_and_car

    Cross-City Comparison: Impacts of Madrid-Seville High-Speed Rail on Population Growth

    95th Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting
    Washington, D.C.
    ,
    (
    2016
    )

    This paper studies and compares the impacts of Madrid-Seville High-Speed Rail (HSR) on population growth in the five cities served by this line—Madrid, Ciudad Real, Puertollano, Córdoba, and Seville. The analysis period ranges from 1990 to 2006. The comparative analysis finds that the impacts of HSR largely differ. The association between the opening of HSR and population growth in Ciudad Real is observable; but the relationship is not clear in other station inner buffer areas. To study the impacts of HSR on population growth in each station area, accessibility-based spatial autoregressive models are adopted. The estimates suggest that HSR contributes to Ciudad Real with a relevant population increase, whereas it seldom benefits Puertollano. As the two largest cities along the HSR line, the improvement of accessibility leads to population growth in central Madrid. On the contrary, in Seville, instead of moving towards the central area, with easier access to suburban areas and to other cities, people are likely to move out from the city center. In Cordoba, population growth is not directly influenced by the improved accessibility, but is significantly correlated to the new residential land development, as the urban renovation project affiliated to HSR.

  • Induction_bus_and_car

    Capacity Constrained Accessibility of High-Speed Rail

    Transportation
    (
    2015
    )

    This paper proposes an enhanced measure of accessibility that explicitly considers circumstances in which the capacity of the transport infrastructure is limited. Under these circumstances, passengers may suffer longer waiting times, resulting in the delay or cancellation of trips. Without considering capacity constraints, the standard measure overestimates the accessibility contribution of transport infrastructure. We estimate the expected waiting time and the probability of forgoing trips based on the M/GB/1 type of queuing and discrete-event simulation, and formally incorporate the impacts of capacity constraints into a new measure: Capacity Constrained Accessibility (CCA). To illustrate the differences between CCA and standard measures of accessibility, this paper estimates the accessibility change in the Beijing–Tianjin corridor due to the Beijing–Tianjin Intercity High-Speed Railway (BTIHSR). We simulate and compare the CCA and standard measures in five queuing scenarios with varying demand patterns and service headway assumptions. The results show that 1) under low system loads condition, CCA is compatible with and absorbs the standard measure as a special case; 2) when demand increases and approaches capacity, CCA declines significantly; in two quasi-real scenarios, the standard measure overestimates the accessibility improvement by 14~30% relative to the CCA; and 3) under the scenario with very high demand and an unreliable timetable, the CCA is almost reduced to the pre-BTIHSR level. Because the new CCA measure effectively incorporates the impact of capacity constraints, it is responsive to different arrival rules, service distributions, and system loads, and therefore provides a more realistic representation of accessibility change than the standard measure.

  • Induction_bus_and_car

    Agglomeration and Diversification: Bi-Level Analysis of 15-Years’ Impacts of Madrid-Seville High-Speed Rail

    Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting
    Washington, D.C.
    ,
    (
    2015
    )

    This paper studies the impacts of Madrid-Seville High-Speed Rail (HSR) on population growth and land cover change in the five HSR connected cities – Madrid, Ciudad Real, Puertollano, Cordoba, and Seville – at both regional and local level. The analysis period ranges from 1991 to 2006. The study finds that, at regional level, the population growth and land development process concentrate mostly towards the two largest cities, Madrid and Seville, while other smaller HSR served cities are also benefited by HSR. At local level, the impacts of HSR are more diverse. The process of population redistribution and land development in each city varies largely. Among all evidences, HSR contributes the most to Ciudad Real, with booming population increases and urban development. In addition, younger people are also attracted to reside in this area. To study the accessibility impacts of HSR on the development of new urban areas in each HSR city, binary probit models incorporating the change of accessibility, population, and neighborhood situations are adopted. The results suggest that, the land development in smaller cities can be majorly ascribed to the improvement of regional accessibility and population growth. However, to explain the urban development process in Madrid and Seville, the inputs with only accessibility and population are not sufficient.

PEOPLE

  • Yu Shen

    Yu Shen

    Assistant Professor at Tongji Univ.
  • Jinhua Zhao

    Jinhua Zhao

    Professor of Cities and Transportation