High Speed Rail commuting impacts on labour migration: The case of the concentration of metropolis in the Madrid functional area

Abstract

The relations of dependence between transport accessibility, migration and the regional scope of labour markets have been widely studied in the literature. However little attention has been paid so far to labour migration derived from long-distance commuting favoured by relatively new transport technologies such as High Speed Rail (HSR). Even in France or Spain – both European countries with long experience in HSR commuting and the subject of extensive literature on its impacts–, there has been very little study of the effects on labour markets. The high cost of building and operating HSR lines and the current financial instability point to the advisability of scientifically analysing any HSR spillover impacts.This paper contributes to the limited existing literature by applying a regression analysis to panel data to model the impact of HSR on labour markets in commuting relations. Considering HSR as a variable and inter-regional labour mobility indicators, the model has been validated using the HSR commuting lines that converge in the Madrid metropolitan area for the period 2004–2015, and reveals that HSR is a key variable for understanding the growth of labour contracts. The results also show how the financial crisis has reduced the role of unemployment rates and housing prices as significant variables due to the high percentage of undeclared work and the fall in housing prices. Further research is needed into the model's limitations, namely the inability to estimate regional disparities derived from the presence of HSR, and the failure to disentangle causes and effects among the variables of HSR commuting mobility, unemployment rates and housing prices.