High-speed Rail Network In China Research Articles

Transport capacity optimization for high-speed rail network considering flexible train composition and additional capacity pool

To balance the limited capacity and constantly changing demand in the high-speed rail network, a transport capacity optimization problem is investigated by adjusting train composition through uncoupling/coupling operations at the origin station, scheduling additional trains from the capacity pool, and optimizing the seat allocation among ODs. To make joint decisions, a two-stage stochastic programming model is formulated to minimize both operating cost and penalty cost for unsatisfied passengers, while incorporating various constraints such as flow conservation, loading capacity, flexible composition, etc. The two-stage model is linearized into a mixed-integer linear programming model, which can be effectively solved for small networks but is still intractable to solve for realistic networks. Therefore, a Lagrangian relaxation algorithm is proposed integrating parallel computing and sub-gradient method. Finally, two sets of case tests, including a toy network and a real-world case of a high-speed rail network in China, are implemented to show the performance of the proposed approach. The results illustrate that the parallel heuristic algorithm could generate a high-quality solution with a slight discrepancy from the optimal solution, while achieving a commendable computation time. Furthermore, the findings emphasize the advantages of applying flexible train composition and additional capacity pool in the high-speed railway system for cost-saving and supply–demand matching.

A robustness assessment with passenger flow data of high-speed rail network in China

Many existing studies on the robustness assessment of high-speed rail (HSR) networks use HSR services derived from timetable data as an alternative indicator of actual passenger flow. This alternative method has inherent limitations because of the various capacities and seat allocations among different HSR services operated between the same station pairs, leading to a biased evaluation of network robustness. Using an actual ticket sales dataset and HSR timetable data, this study integrates passenger volume into the robustness evaluation of China's HSR network. Moreover, this study proposes systematic methods to assess the robustness of HSR networks at the station and large-scale network levels, with procedure indicators. We design random failure and target attack simulation scenarios in un-weighted, travel-time-weighted, and flow-weighted networks. Simulation is conducted from 2014 to 2016, and with a medium-and long-term HSR network plan in China. Using the methodological advances and empirical studies, we find that China's HSR network became less robust first, and then enhanced robustness strength during network expansion. The significance of integrating passenger flow data in the robustness assessment is confirmed, as the same attack strategy may affect the total travel time and the number of passengers delivered differently. In addition, the proposed indicators are useful for capturing the procedure failure of HSR networks and critical stations.

Accessibility-oriented performance evaluation of high-speed railways using a three-layer network model

High-speed railways, as dominant transportation patterns, constitute a large-scale complex network. Network performance is critical for high-level transportation services in transportation management. However, existing studies generally adopt pure topological indicators to evaluate performance in a single network and without considering the specific characteristics of rail transportation. This paper modeled the high-speed railway as a three-layer network including topological, functional, and service layers and assessed the integrated network performance from the view of transportation accessibility. In addition, the rail stations were prioritized and their performances in different layers were compared to analyze whether the total integrated performance was restricted by its connection abilities, functional capacities, and transportation service level. Finally, a case study of the high-speed rail network in China and comparisons with other traditional evaluation methods were conducted to verify the feasibility and superiority of the model. The findings of this study enable to provide management implications for rail transportation planning, organization, and operations.

Spatial spillovers of pollution via high-speed rail network in China

The advent of the high-speed railway (HSR) has dramatically reduced transportation costs in China and reshaped the economic geography. Provided that the HSR increased the mobility of production factors, industrial firms and their pollution emissions may also be reallocated between cities. This paper collects firm-level microdata and utilizes an adjusted spatial econometric model to study the spatial spillovers of air and water pollution via the HSR network. We find that a firm's pollution level is increased by the decline of pollution from firms located in the HSR-connected neighboring cities. Further investigations suggest that the spillover of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) via the HSR network is a possible mechanism through which the pollution are transmitted between cities. We also show evidence that the magnitude of pollution spillovers is highly correlated with regional economic growth, environmental investment, the number of industrial firms, and per capita rail length in a province.

A spatiotemporal analysis of the robustness of high-speed rail network in China

Most studies on the robustness of high-speed rail (HSR) network examine the issue at the aggregate level and consider a fixed period (e.g., a day or a month), regardless of when and where the disruption occurs. This study proposes a holistic framework of assessing the impact of node cascading disruptions in HSR network considering different affected times-of-day and geographic regions. A weighted network efficiency metric is proposed to assess network performance considering both travel time and train frequency along the topological shortest path. Analysis of China’s HSR finds that (1) the network is less robust to disruptions occurring in East China or along the Harbin-Hong Kong corridor; (2) Disruptions during 10:00–15:00 have the largest impact; (3) lockdowns during COVID-19 outbreak in Jan-Feb 2020 led to 14.5% reduction in overall network efficiency. The results generate insights into further development of the HSR network and provide policy support for HSR resilience-enhancing strategies.

Transportation network and venture capital mobility: An analysis of air travel and high-speed rail in China

Transportation network plays a critical role in reshaping the spatial geographical economy in terms of population, urban form, output and so on. But the impact of transportation on capital mobility is seldom revealed. Using venture capital investment events and airline network as well as high-speed rail network in China, this paper examines the effects of transportation network on capital mobility. We find that 1% decline in travel time will lead to increase in VC investment deals by 0.02. Heterogeneous results indicate that small firms, young firms, and emerging industries benefit more from the transportation network, which demonstrates the role of transportation network in alleviating information asymmetries. In addition, heterogeneity on VC flow direction offers suggestive evidence that transportation network is likely to alleviate development imbalance within wealthier cities while widening the gap between wealthier cities and poorer cities.

High-speed rail network in China: the contribution of fast trains to regional tourism and economic development

Purpose The high-speed rail network can lead to the transformation of the tourism industry, as well as the regional economy. In the present study, a reasonable method was developed to assess the contributions of high-speed rail network to the development of tourism and economy in a Chinese region known as the “1 + 8” city tourism circle. Design/methodology/approach The method proposed here combines not only tourism revenue but also regional economy in a MGM (1, n) gray model, and it studies the tourist and economic output of this tourism circle before and after the high-speed rail network’s construction using an advanced “with and without comparison” method. Findings By using this method, the accuracy of the prediction of the contribution rate of high-speed rail network is improved. We found that in the “1 + 8” city tourism circle, the high-speed rail network positively contributes to increase of the tourism arrival and tourism revenue. Furthermore, regional economy significantly grows under the impact of the high-speed rail network. Research limitations/implications The “1 + 8” city tourism circle is studied as a closed system in this paper, and the authors focus on the economic associations between the cities in the circle by ignoring the impact from outside this circle. This treatment means, simplifies and enables the feasibility of this study, but it virtually leads to the deviation of outcomes between this study and the practical. Practical implications For theoretical values, by studying a normal Chinese inland region, this study reconfirmed the positive impact of high-speed railway empirically. In the meantime, this study developed an improved method by introducing gray theory models to “with and without comparison” method to calculate the contribution of high-speed railway to the regional tourism and economy development. Such method simultaneously incorporates the indexes of regional tourism income and regional GDP simultaneously. It is direct and convenient as it can achieve accuracy requirements using only a small amount of data, and it reconciles more with reality by considering the interaction of the outcomes of tourism and economy. Social implications For practical values, using the proposed method, a direct and convenient calculation of the contributions of high-speed railway to many other regions can be achieved if the data of the outcomes of tourism and economy can be obtained. In such a way, the regions that really need high-speed railway to stimulate their development can be distinguished from regions whose high-speed railway is under blind construction. Thus, the government may take actions to reassess some uneconomic high-speed railway projects without discouraging the construction of high-speed railway in other regions. The authors believe that this is important not only for China but also for many other countries with high-speed railway projects. Originality/value This study develops a reasonable method of assessing the contribution of high-speed rail to regional tourism and economic development. Using this method, this study confirmed that high-speed rail indeed positively impacts the regional development.

Impact of high-speed rail on population mobility and urbanisation: A case study on Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, China

Through rapid and large-scale transportation across regions, high-speed rail improves urban accessibility and decreases the space time distances between cities, greatly enhancing the spatial connection between cities along the route. Based on the panel data from 2005 to 2016 of 26 cities of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, a region with one of the most densely constructed high-speed rail network in China, this paper constructs a difference-in-difference model to investigate the impacts of high-speed rail service on the population mobility, and the impacts on urbanisation from the perspectives of population and industrial structure. The results showed that high-speed rail had a negative effect on long-term population migration and significantly promoted short-term population mobility, leading to a negative effect on the population urbanisation; from the perspective of industrial structure, high-speed rail increased the proportion of the added value of the tertiary industry, promoted the upgrading of industrial structure, and consequently improved the quality of urbanisation.

Understanding Accessibility Changes from the Development of a High-Speed Rail Network in the Yangtze River Delta, China: Speed Increases and Distance Deductions

The rapid development of the high-speed rail (HSR) network in China has compressed intercity rail travel times. However, what is contentious is whether the expansion of HSR network has created a landscape of uneven accessibility, i.e. producing winners and losers regarding cities’ changing ability to access to the others. This paper uses the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) – one of the most populous and developed mega-regions with the high dense HSR network in China – as a case study to examine accessibility restructuring and major geographical features of winners and losers through a longitudinal comparison before and after the development of the HSR network. Analytical results show that the introduction of the HSR service network has exacerbated the uneven pattern of network accessibility formed by the conventional rail (CR) network. Aside from increased train speeds, intercity travel makes time savings thanks to significant rail distance deductions in the change from CR to HSR services because HSR needs a straighter trajectory, which is usually ignored in the literature. ‘Winner’ cities are either privileged substantially by a much higher quality of HSR service or a much shorter network rail distance. HSR cities can also lose out due to a large increase in network rail distance and a low quality of HSR service. Except for a few CR cities which neighbor HSR stations, thus winning an above average change, most CR cities are disadvantaged as a result of HSR network development. This paper extends the speed-dominated understanding of accessibility change from the network perspective of HSR services.

Introduction to special issue: Rail transit development in China and beyond

Rail transit is widely considered an efficient and environment-friendly means to address the increasing demand for travel. In the past decades, the scale and speed of China's rail transit development has been unprecedented. By the end of 2017, a total of 165 urban rail lines including heavy rail and light rail were in operation in 34 cities in mainland China, with a total track length of 5,033 kilometers (km), and the vast majority of them were built after 2000 (China Association of Metros, 2017). At the intercity scale, China has built the largest high-speed rail (HSR) network in the world, with over 29,000 km HSR lines by the end of 2018 (Central Government of China, 2019). Efforts to develop rail transit are also observed in other cities in both developing and developed countries.
 
 We planned this special issue in response to the rapid development of rail transit in China and beyond. In preparation for the special issue, we organized two symposiums to facilitate debates on related research topics in June 2017, including a special session on rail transit at the 11th annual conference of the International Association for China Planning (IACP) hosted by the Harbin Institute of Technology in Harbin, China, and the second Symposium on the HSR Network in China hosted by Jinan University in Guangzhou, China.

Circuity analyses of HSR network and high-speed train paths in China.

Circuity, defined as the ratio of the shortest network distance to the Euclidean distance between one origin–destination (O-D) pair, can be adopted as a helpful evaluation method of indirect degrees of train paths. In this paper, the maximum circuity of the paths of operated trains is set to be the threshold value of the circuity of high-speed train paths. For the shortest paths of any node pairs, if their circuity is not higher than the threshold value, the paths can be regarded as the reasonable paths. With the consideration of a certain relative or absolute error, we cluster the reasonable paths on the basis of their inclusion relationship and the center path of each class represents a passenger transit corridor. We take the high-speed rail (HSR) network in China at the end of 2014 as an example, and obtain 51 passenger transit corridors, which are alternative sets of train paths. Furthermore, we analyze the circuity distribution of paths of all node pairs in the network. We find that the high circuity of train paths can be decreased with the construction of a high-speed railway line, which indicates that the structure of the HSR network in China tends to be more complete and the HSR network can make the Chinese railway network more efficient.

High-Speed Rail and Manufacturing Agglomeration

In China, the roles played by high speed rail (HSR) in improving regional accessibility and promoting urban growth have recently generated significant research interest. However, the question as to how HSR could shape urban development seems rather complex. This paper aims to discuss HSR's role in shaping urban economic development by tracing links from HSR to manufacturing agglomeration with panel data from the Beijing–Guangzhou HSR network in China from 2000 to 2015. On the basis of the new economic geography model, market potential and manufacturing wages are incorporated into the analysis framework, and a treatment effect model is used to account for the endogeneity of HSR in the study. Model results provide three conclusions. First, in general, HSR significantly increases manufacturing agglomeration for HSR cities. Second, an inverted-U relationship between the agglomeration impact of HSR and market potential is confirmed. That is, while the agglomeration effect by HSR is significantly within a threshold level of market potential, HSR in fact has a negative effect, or the dispersion effect, on manufacturing agglomeration beyond the threshold level. Third, the agglomeration impact of HSR differs across regions. For example, the agglomeration impact of HSR is more significant in the second-tier HSR cities than in major HSR cities, indicating the overall trend of regional integration and economic convergence among different regions of HSR through time. Results from this study are useful for policy makers as well as for researchers for analyzing the economic implications of HSR in the future.

Benefits Assessment of Large Scale High-Speed Rail Network in China: The Effect on Low-Cost Carriers

This paper examines the impact of China’s large-scale high-speed rail (HSR) expansion, announced in June 2016, on low-cost carriers (LCCs) and the associated benefits assessment of the expansion program. Our analysis suggests that HSR imposes a greater threat to LCCs than to full service carriers, and the HSR expansion that is intended to reach a great number of small cities has left Chinese LCCs with little survival room, even with full airline market liberalization and sufficient airport capacity. By conducting a “propensity score matching” to pair HSR-linked city pairs in China to the counterfactual US airline routes, we find that most of these Chinese routes would be viable markets for LCCs to operate. The benefits of HSR expansion may thus be overestimated if not recognizing the LCCs’ role as an alternative mode to serve these markets. In particular, for the routes to the central and western China with very small travel demand and high HSR construction cost, LCC service could be more cost efficient and operationally flexible than HSR. Our analysis calls for a more careful evaluation of the program and, more generally, a balanced and coordinated HSR and LCC development in China.

Comment on “China's Transport Infrastructure Investment: Past, Present, and Future”

Comment on “China's Transport Infrastructure Investment: Past, Present, and Future”

A hierarchical line planning approach for a large-scale high speed rail network: The China case

Planning a set of train lines in a large-scale high speed rail (HSR) network is typically influenced by issues of longer travel distance, high transport demand, track capacity constraints, and a non-periodic timetable. In this paper, we describe an integrated hierarchical approach to determine line plans by defining the stations and trains according to two classes. Based on a bi-level programming model, heuristics are developed for two consecutive stages corresponding to each classification. The approach determines day-period based train line frequencies as well as a combination of various stopping patterns for a mix of fast trunk line services between major stations and a variety of slower body lines that offer service to intermediate stations, so as to satisfy the predicted passenger transport demand. Efficiencies of the line plans described herein concern passenger travel times, train capacity occupancy, and the number of transfers. Moreover, our heuristics allow for combining many additional conflicting demand–supply factors to design a line plan with predominantly cost-oriented and/or customer-oriented objectives. A range of scenarios are developed to generate three line plans for a real-world example of the HSR network in China using a decision support system. The performance of potential train schedules is evaluated to further examine the feasibility of the obtained line plans through graphical timetables.

Dynamic Performance Simulation of Overhead Contact System for over 350km/h High-Speed Rail

With full development of 350km/h high-speed rail network in China, further research in the key technology of 380km/h or higher super-speed rail system has become crucial. Applying the simulation of pantograph-catenary interaction based on infinite element method, this paper simulated the dynamic performance of pantograph-catenary system for high-tension overhead contact system at over 350km/h. The research findings showed that wave propagation speed can still serve as a brief computing method for the running speed within the range of 350-400km/h. When the running speed reaches 80% of the wave propagation speed or higher, the current-carrying quality of double-pantograph-catenaries system might not satisfy the standard of EN 50367 all the time.

Impact of ground subsidence on the Beijing–Tianjin high-speed railway as mapped by radar interferometry

The construction of the Beijing–Tianjin high-speed railway line started in July 2005. The railway has been completed and opened to traffic in August 2008, just before the Beijing Olympic Games. The 113 km railway costing 13.3 billion Yuan (US $1.5 billion) is the country's first high-standard passenger rail. It is also believed to be the pilot project of a massive high-speed rail network in China. The train shuttles passengers between the cities in just half an hour, 45 minutes shorter than the usual travel time. The train is designed to go 200 km/h, but can reach speeds of 350 km/h. The current railway is under pressure, handling 25.55 million passengers each year. The new passenger rail line is expected to handle 32 million passengers from 2008 and 54 million passengers in 2015. Both Tianjin and Beijing have been suffering from ground subsidence due to groundwater extraction. This study focuses on mapping the impact of such subsidence on the Beijing–Tianjin high-speed railway using differential radar interferometry. Both persistent scatterer interferometric synthetic aperture radar (PSInSAR) and differential InSAR (DInSAR) techniques are used to analyse SAR data collected by ENVISAT ASAR and ALOS PALSAR sensors. The results are further analysed in GIS and compared with reported ground survey results.