Abstract
The construction of South Korean High-Speed Rail (HSR) or Korea Train eXpress (KTX) has been evolving in phases since its first operation in 2004. This development raises concerns whether the benefits from the extended HSR network would again be limited to the initial HSR corridors and will deepen the inequalities in accessibility with the rising issue of uneven regional development of the country. This paper measures the accessibility of each stage of HSR network extension and evaluates its spatial distribution, variation, and changes using weighted averaged travel time and potential accessibility indicators. The results of this study find different accessibility impacts from each stage of HSR extension. Although travel-time reduction and increased attractions have been widened in more cities by each HSR extension, the spatial equity is degenerated by the extension in 2010/2011 as the improvement of accessibility has been concentrated in cities along the primary HSR corridor near the already-advantageous Seoul capital area. In contrast, the future HSR extension in 2018 will enhance equitable accessibility to the isolated regions such as the northeast and the southwest regions of the country. However, the relative degree of accessibility improvement will not be large enough for increasing the spatial equity of accessibility without more extended HSR networks between provinces.
Highlights
With operating speeds ranging between 250 and 350 km/h—twice that of the current ground transportation of automobiles or conventional trains, high-speed rail (HSR) operation brings entirely different impacts in the transportation system of a country
Much literature has analyzed the changes in accessibility benefits of the HSR network, yet the evaluation of spatial equity impacts of HSR is limited, especially based on the South Korean HSR
Our study evaluates both efficiency and the spatial variations of equity impacts in cities and counties of South Korea from the HSR extensions at different stages (S1, S2, and S3) by using weighted average travel time (WATT) and potential accessibility (PA) measures
Summary
With operating speeds ranging between 250 and 350 km/h—twice that of the current ground transportation of automobiles or conventional trains, high-speed rail (HSR) operation brings entirely different impacts in the transportation system of a country. This increased speed reduces travel times and reorganizes the spatial interaction, unity, and competitiveness between cities and surrounding metropolitan regions (Forslund and Johansson, 1995, Martin, 1997, Vickerman et al, 1999, Martin et al, 2004). Benefits received from the HSR system are not evenly distributed across the country (Monzón et al, 2013). The isolation from the initial HSR network may intensify spatial disparities of interactions among cities
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