Abstract
Rapid urbanization and industrialization in Chinese cities have substantially elevated carbon emissions, and transportation plays a major role in these emissions. Due to data availability, research on the impact of both high-speed rail (HSR) and other urban transportation modes on urban carbon emissions is rare. Using a relatively large panel of 194 Chinese cities from 2008–2013, we examine the impact of HSR, conventional rail, bus, roads, and subways on urban carbon emissions. We further document the interaction of these transport modes with geo-economic variables, and more accurately measure HSR’s impact on emissions using a comprehensive accessibility metric. During this time, China developed, constructed and began to operate an extensive HSR network. Our results show that increases in HSR lead to rises in carbon emissions, emissions per GDP unit and per capita. We also find that transportation’s impact on carbon emissions differs by city size and region, and transportation modes significantly interact with GDP, population and urban area to affect carbon emissions. These interactions imply that the government’s promotion of HSR over conventional rail may have unintended consequences and boost urban carbon emissions.
Highlights
Rapid urbanization and economic growth have led to accelerating transport growth and substantial accompanying carbon emissions in China
We investigate whether extending the high-speed rail (HSR) network along with promoting other urban transport modes leads to unintended consequences that could exacerbate greenhouse gas emissions
The extended hypotheses for HSR are: H3a: HSR interacts with the urban population and increases urban carbon emissions
Summary
We investigate transportation’s impact on carbon emissions by city size and region as well as the existence of quadratic transportation effects and transportation’s interactions with GDP, population and area. A growing literature exists on carbon emissions in China, research that examines both HSR and other urban transportation’s impacts on carbon emissions in Chinese cities and their interactions with economic variables such as GDP, area and population have not been examined. Increasing HSR, measured by rising accessibility, significantly and positively raises carbon emissions, emissions per GDP and emissions per capita; results are robust when controlling for GDP, population, economic structure and area. It documents differing substitution and consumption promotion effects between HSR and both highways and civil aviation.
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