High-speed rail

The special issue is organized in response to a growing interest in High-Speed Rail (HSR) development worldwide. In 1964, the first HSR, Tokaido Shinkansen, began revenue service in Japan. In 1981, France completed its first Train à Grande Vitesse line from Paris to Lyon, followed by the Intercity Express in Germany in 1991, the Alta Velocidad Española in Spain in 1992, and the Korea Train Express in South Korea in 2004. In October 2003, China opened its first HSR, the Qin-Shen Passenger Line. Since then, China has launched a new era of rapid HSR construction. By 2016, HSR in China grew to 22,000 km,¹ accounting for about two-thirds of HSR in the world. In all these countries, HSR has become an important factor facilitating sustainable transportation, spurring urbanization and land development, and promoting urban and regional economic development (e.g. Chen et al. 2016; Diao, Zhu, and Zhu 2016; Liu, Lund, and Mathiesen 2013; Zhu, Yu, and Chen 2015).

High-speed trains travel at faster speeds than conventional trains, with a maximum speed over 200 km per hour. High-speed trains have many advantages. For example, (1) individuals’ activity space increases substantially as they can make a daily round trip to locations that are farther away; (2) people have a better access to various high-order goods and services (e.g. specialized hospitals and luxury goods); (3) people enjoy more flexibility in choosing where to live and where to work. However, there are some disadvantages associated with the HSR technology. First, because of their speed requirements, high-speed trains cannot stop very frequently. Some smaller cities and towns tend to have less frequent train service than before. Second, HSR often aims to shorten travel time between major cities. Accordingly, smaller cities and towns have to construct new HSR stations that are outside of their existing urban settlements, increasing the risk of leapfrog development (Zhu, Yu, and Chen 2015). Third, HSR brings cities and towns closer together and increases competition among them because their marketplaces have more overlap than before. This poses a number of challenges to smaller cities and towns, as they are vulnerable to competition from larger cities (Chen 2012).

The impact of HSR on travel behavior is substantive and merits further investigation. First, HSR attracts customers from air travel (Zhang, Yang, and Wang 2017). It increases pressure on the aviation industry, especially short-distance air travel (Li and Loo 2017). Second, as high-speed trains sometimes operate on the same tracks as conventional trains, they reduce the amount of conventional train service. This brings social equity concerns as low-income people are more dependent on cheaper and slower conventional trains. Third, the impact of HSR on automobile use needs more attention from researchers. HSR changes residential location choice as people become more footloose. In some large metropolises, commuting distances for some people have become so long that commuting by car is less efficient than by HSR. The travel behavior changes in these long-distance commuters have important implications for land-use policy and housing policy. The impact of HSR on automobile use is also obvious for non-work travel (i.e. vacation trips, meeting friends, etc.). It is faster, more comfortable, more relaxing, and in most cases, cheaper than driving a car. Empirical research on this topic is greatly needed.

The influence of HSR on urban and regional development is also tremendous. The market potential of cities and regions improves as the ranges of marketplaces at all levels increase. This brings both opportunities and challenges. For cities providing high-order goods and services (which require a large population threshold and long travel distance; e.g. luxury cars and specialized hospitals), their market can now cover a much larger range. Smaller cities and towns face more competition from neighboring larger cities. It becomes increasingly important for these smaller places to define their unique resources in order to benefit from the improved accessibility.

Given the impact of HSR on cities and regions across the world, we have edited this special issue with the goal of attracting more attention from scholars, practitioners and policymakers. To facilitate discussion among scholars, four sessions were organized at the 9th Annual Conference of International Association for China Planning (IACP), which Dr. Cao was honored to chair, at Chongqing University in June 2015. After the standard review process, we accepted three papers for this issue. Because Chang and Jung (2017), a regular submission to this journal, fits the theme of HSR, it is also included in this special issue. The remainder of this foreword briefly introduces these four studies.

Shen et al. (2017) examine the effects of the Madrid-Seville HSR on land development. Using land-cover data from 1991 to 2006, they assess newly developed lands throughout five provinces. They conclude that land development occurred mostly in Madrid and Seville and HSR seems to have had a limited impact. However, within three smaller HSR cities, HSR appeared to direct land development towards the five-kilometer catchment area of HSR stations, whereas land development in Madrid and Seville largely occurred beyond the catchment area, because of land availability. Furthermore, HSR improved the accessibility of the whole region, and Seville experienced the largest increase among all five provinces. Binary logit/probit models of land-cover changes show that regional accessibility improvement and population growth were the main drivers of land development in smaller cities, but these two factors have a limited explanatory power for land development in the two larger terminal cities. Taken together, the HSR benefited the two larger cities more than the three smaller cities.

Givoni and Chen (2017) evaluate the extent of air–HSR integration in the Shanghai Hongqiao Transportation Hub. They contend that although there is a growing interest in air–rail integration, the practice worldwide seems to deviate from the policy objective. The Hongqiao hub is not an exception. First, secondary sources indicate that the airport serves residents of both Shanghai and surrounding regions, whereas the rail station serves mainly Shanghai residents, and that passengers transferring from the airport account for less than 5% of rail passengers. So ‘this integration is relatively limited.’² Second, the 2020 ridership forecast for the hub does not show that air–HSR integration is a strategic priority. Third, interviews with local experts and policy makers also lead to a conclusion of low integration in spite of some air–HSR integration services. They state that the low integration is because (1) air and rail transport are regulated and managed by different government agencies with their own objectives, and (2) the introduction and expansion of HSR are oriented toward competing with the aviation industry. Accordingly, addressing institutional barriers is critical for air–HSR integration. They also assess the potential and offer specific suggestions for air–HSR integration in the Hongqiao hub.

Adjusting the rates of fare discounts and refunds can affect the share of HSR in the inter-city transportation market. Using a survey of passengers of the Beijing-Shanghai HSR, Zhang, Yao, and Sun (2017) explore the joint impacts of the two strategies on the choices among HSR, air travel, and conventional train. Because different travelers tend to have different travel preferences, the authors integrate a semi-compensatory mode choice model and a latent class model to examine the stated preferences of these passengers. They illustrate respondents’ taste heterogeneity: the value of time of low-income passengers is about 30% of that of high-income ones. Once HSR fare reaches a certain level, HSR is not an option for low-income passengers. The model results also show that discounted fares have a much larger impact on HSR share than refunds. They propose different discount and refund strategies to maximize HSR revenues based on the discrepancy between HSR supply and passenger demand.

Using 400 HSR passengers in South Korea, Chang and Jung (2017) conducted a series of stated preference experiments to assess the monetary valuations for 11 service attributes related to tangible attributes, comfort, and convenience. The choice of these attributes was based on the literature and a pilot study of experts and lay people. In the experiments, respondents were given two images with auxiliary texts: the image with a service attribute had a higher fare than the one without such an attribute. Then they were asked to indicate which of two options they preferred. They were further asked to make a tradeoff between fare and a package of several service attributes. Binary logit models were developed to determine the monetary values of the 11 service attributes and the service bundle. The results show that seat availability has the largest monetary value, followed by in-train cleanliness, man-made noise, seat spacing, and temperature control. Based on the results, the authors discuss price discrimination associated with travel time and quality of service.

Jason Cao
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
[email protected]
Pengyu Zhu
University of Hong Kong

Notes

1. http://en.people.cn/n3/2017/0103/c90000-9162316.html, accessed on March 21, 2017.

2. However, combining the 5% share with the 2013 ridership in Table 1 (Givoni and Chen, 2017), the share of air passengers transferring from the rail station might reach about 10%. We would argue that this share is non-trivial for the airport.