How Cities Influenced by High Speed Rail Development: A Case Study in China

Abstract

This study aims at analyzing various extents of transportation equity change and the accessibility change of cities along High Speed Rail (HSR) line in China. To evaluate the accessibility change and transportation equity, certain cities along the transportation corridor which the successfully operating WuGuang HSR lies in are selected as samples of influenced ones first. Cities’ connection with HSR and their sizes are considered as choosing criteria. Weighted mean travel time and Generalized weighed travel time, which integrated with generalized cost, are both calculated in the two different scenarios to indicate accessibility changes of each city. The two scenarios are with or without the advent of WuGuang HSR. Accessibilities in different scenarios were carefully contrasted. It was found out that there is no significant change in the mean accessibility aspect of the region between the two scenarios. Then transportation equity issue of the transportation corridor is discussed based on the results of Gini coefficient using the data of Passenger Transportation Balance index. Passenger Transportation Balance index is proposed in this article to indicate the how much is one city’s transportation demand satisfied. The research found that cities had HSR stations built-in all attained a more accessibility improvement comparing with the others. And the gap between the accessibilities of the cities along the HSR line and those which are not is relatively wider. However, the equity evaluation using Transportation Balance Gini Coefficient reveals that massive investment in HSR has no potent evidence for equity improvement.