Abstract
High-speed rail (HSR) represents China’s advancing productivity; however, quite a few HSR stations face problems due to inappropriate planning and limited passenger flow. To optimize future planning on HSR lines and stations and facilitate efficient operation, we used brightness as a representative of station development and nearby human activity, analyzing its spatial and temporal distribution, classification categories, and influencing factors of 980 stations using nighttime light images from 2012 to 2019. The following conclusions were drawn: (1) There are 41 stations with high brightness between 80 and 320 nW·cm−2·sr−1, which are concentrated in provincial capitals, large cities, and at line ends. The overall number of these stations increases by 57% in the past eight years. (2) Stations with high brightness but minimal changes that opened in 2013–2019 are mainly concentrated in provincial capitals and large- or medium-sized cities, and those with high brightness and significant changes are mostly new stations nearby. More than 70% of stations that started HSR operation before or in 2012 have high brightness. (3) Brightness positively correlates with the number of daily trains, and it changes faster at stations with more daily trains. It changes most within 0–1 year after HSR operation opening and exhibits a relatively slow but long-term increase over the next 2–6 years.
Highlights
The construction of transportation infrastructure is a key factor in economic growth [1,2,3,4], which follows a popular maxim in China regarding regional economic development:“If you want to be rich, build roads first” [5]
For the 272 stations that started high-speed rail (HSR) operation from 2003 to 2012, the brightness before the operation was not available; we only considered brightness during operation and used the same threshold Rmedian as 708 stations to divide these stations into high-brightness or lowbrightness categories
The results show that HSR had the most significant impact on station development and human activity intensity in the first year during operation, and had a relatively long-term but slow impact in 2–6 years
Summary
The construction of transportation infrastructure is a key factor in economic growth [1,2,3,4], which follows a popular maxim in China regarding regional economic development:“If you want to be rich, build roads first” [5]. The construction of transportation infrastructure is a key factor in economic growth [1,2,3,4], which follows a popular maxim in China regarding regional economic development:. As a popular transportation mode, the railway is a national economic artery that comprises the backbone of the transportation system, which plays an essential role in China’s economic and social development [6]. Urbanization and economic growth have accelerated since the reform and opening in 1978; the traditional railway network has been unable to meet the growing needs of intercity transportation. The Beijing–Tianjin intercity HSR starting operation on 8 January 2008 is China’s first HSR with independent intellectual property rights, and HSR in China has proliferated since [7]. The operating HSR mileage reached 35,000 km by 2019, exceeding two-thirds of the total HSR mileage globally
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