High-speed Railway Connection Research Articles

Does high-speed railway affect the cost behavior of tourism firms? Evidence from China

Cost stickiness, which is also termed cost asymmetry, describes the asymmetric relationship between revenue and cost. In this study, we examine whether high-speed railway (HSR) connection affects the cost stickiness of tourism firms. Employing a sample of 324 Chinese tourism firms from 2003 to 2018 and applying a difference-in-difference (DID) method, we find that the cost stickiness of tourism firms increases after HSR connection. Our results also reveal that the relationship between HSR connection and cost stickiness is more pronounced in firms with higher free cash flow (FCF), higher labor costs, and in state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Our research advances an in-depth understanding of the cost behavior in tourism firms and sheds light on the policy effect of HSR connection.

Bringing Minds Together: High‐speed Railways, Team Building, and Innovation Collaboration

This paper studies the impact of increased travelling efficiency on “innovation collaboration” between cities. It exploits China's recent high-speed railway (HSR) connections in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration. The paper instrumented HSR connections using the postal routes of the Yuan Dynasty and measured innovation collaboration using detailed information on patent applicants and citations. The results show that HSRs led to an increase in innovation collaboration by 121.7 percent from 1998 to 2016, and their overall quality increased by 111.3 percent. In comparison with universities (public sector), the paper found that private sector firms' patent outcomes showed a larger increase in both quantity and quality after the HSR connection. Interestingly, we found that the teams of researchers whose members changed after the HSR connection benefited the most in comparison with both continuing teams and newly formed teams. Additional results prove that HSRs contributed to the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration. The results remained robust using alternative model specifications.

The impact of high speed railway on government expenditure on poverty alleviation in China —Evidence from Chinese poverty counties

In this paper, we evaluate the role of the high speed railway (HSR) project, one of the largest transportation infrastructure projects in the world, in poverty alleviation in China. This study combines county-level data from the China County Statistical Yearbooks with HSR data from the China Railway Yearbooks. The method of difference-in-differences is applied to examine the HSR connection effect on government expenditure in poverty alleviation across Chinese poverty counties over the period of 2010-2018. The results show that the HSR connection has a significantly positive impact on reducing government expenditure in poverty alleviation. Our results, which are based on alternative measurement of poverty alleviation and possible bias arising from endogeneity issue, are robust. This paper highlights that HSR can help achieve accessibility of rural area and poverty alleviation simultaneously. An understanding of the effect is critical for policymakers to promote intra-regional development, balancing efficiency and regional equality.

High‐speed railway and urban productivity disparities

AbstractLarge scale transport infrastructure constructions connect both large metropolitan cities as well as small peripheral cities. Transportation cost reductions facilitate the reallocation of labor factors between these asymmetric regions. Whether the results of labor reallocation narrow down the inter‐regional considerable discrepancies or reinforce the disparities in productivity is uncertain. This paper explores the opening of China’s High‐Speed Railway (HSR) program as a quasi‐natural experiment to estimate the causal effect of the HSR connection on urban disparities in labor productivity. To address the selection bias caused by non‐random placements of HSR routes, we eliminate all metropolitan city nodes and construct a minimum spanning tree as the instrumental variable. Compared with peripheral cities not connected by the HSR, the labor productivity in connected peripheral cities decreases by 12.6% after the opening of the HSR. Using China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS), we further find that the decline of labor productivity is driven by the relocation of high‐skilled labor from the HSR connected peripheral cities to the central cities. This article concludes that the HSR widens the productivity disparities between the large central metropolitan and small peripheral cities connected.

Distance, High-Speed Railway Connection, and Price Efficiency: Evidence From China

We study how geographic proximity to financial centers affects price efficiency. Using high-speed railway connections between firm cities and their nearest financial centers in China as exogenous shocks, we find stocks of connected firms are more efficiently priced than those of firms that are not connected. Consistent with our hypothesis, ease of travel has a stronger effect on firms that are closer to financial centers, smaller, have less institutional ownership and financial analyst coverage, and are not on the short sales list. Our paper highlights the importance of the geographic proximity of firms to financial centers on financial market efficiency.

Transportation infrastructure and entrepreneurship: Evidence from high-speed railway in China

Using high-speed railway (HSR) construction in China as a quasi-experiment, this paper contributes to the understanding of how transportation infrastructure affects entrepreneurship. On the basis of a difference-in-difference approach, we find that access to an HSR connection leads to an increase in entrepreneurship by approximately 3.5 percentage points (35% of the mean). Mechanism exploration suggests that market potential is the main channel that HSR encourages entrepreneurial activities, which is realized by accelerated information sharing and face-to-face interactions. And the effect is bigger for high-educated families, wealthy families and in large cities.

Did high-speed railway cause urban space expansion? ——Empirical evidence from China's prefecture-level cities

Based on a panel dataset with 247 prefecture-level cities from 2006 to 2015 in China, this paper uses a multi-stage difference-in-differences (DID) model to examine the impact of high-speed railway (HSR) opening and frequency on urban space expansion. Moreover, the heterogeneous effects of HSR were explored in terms of the location conditions of the city and HSR station. The main conclusions are shown as follows: (1) The multi-stage DID results reveal that the opening of HSR has significantly promoted the expansion of urban space. (2) Besides the direct connection by HSR, the daily frequency of HSR trains also plays a key role in affecting urban space expansion. (3) The effects of HSR on urban space expansion are different depending on the location conditions of the city and HSR station. First, the cities with a suburban HSR station are likely to experience greater urban expansion than other HSR-connected cities. Second, due to the higher-level economic openness and base, the cities located in the eastern China are more likely to be affected by HSR in terms of urban space expansion. Finally, the advantage in agglomeration environments makes the cities within an urban agglomeration more susceptible to HSR connection.

Does the Development of a High-Speed Railway Improve the Equalization of Medical and Health Services? Evidence from China.

Does the development of a high-speed railway (HSR) have a significant impact on the equalization of medical and health resources allocated among cities? Based on the panel data of 67 cities in China from 2007 to 2016, this paper investigates the direct and dynamic effects of HSR development on the equalization of medical and health services by using the difference-in-differences (DID) method. The empirical results show that an HSR connection significantly reduces the equalization level of medical and health services in cities and that the effect is larger for the period from the year of the connection to the second year. However, in the long term, HSR development improves the equalization level of medical and health services in cities. Heterogeneity tests show that the effect of the HSR connection shows an “N”-shaped trend under different city scales, the equalization level of medical resources in the largest cities benefit the most from HSR development, and the Eastern and Western regions of China are more sensitive to the HSR connection. While the allocation of medical resources is in the direction of equalization, the level of medical resources is significantly more equal with the HSR development in cities with stronger financial capacity and non-core cities. The analysis of other city characteristics provides policy recommendations for improving the public services delivery mode in China’s heterogeneous cities in terms of HSR development.

High‐speed railway to success? The effects of high‐speed rail connection on regional economic development in China

AbstractWe find that high‐speed railway connection in China has led to a reduction in GDP per capita for connected peripheral prefectures. We use the least‐cost path‐spanning tree network to address the nonrandom route placement issue. We find that the reduction of GDP per capita is driven by significant contractions in capital input, industrial output, and skilled labor outflow. We present evidence to support a trade‐based channel in light of falling transportation costs between peripheral and metropolitan regions. Our finding highlights the importance of the cost of human transport.

A conceptual model of power supply for the integrated grid of high-speed railway transport in Russia

The strategy of railway-transport development in Russia until 2030 and beyond involves the application of new technologies ensuring the competitiveness of Russian railways, which act as one of the key growth factors of the economy and its system-forming sector in the transportation industry of Russia. The article discusses the main factors and breakthrough technologies on the basis of which an integrated grid of high-speed railway connection is created. Paramount importance is given to increasing the speed of passenger and freight trains, combining high-speed railway lines into a single grid to provide an agglomeration effect, mobility, energy efficiency, and environmental safety. One of the priorities is the factor of reliable and safe power supply of competitive railway connections, for which a conceptual model of railway power supply is developed.

HIGH SPEED RAILWAY LINES – FUTURE PART OF CZECH RAILWAY NETWORK?

The paper first describes high speed rail generally and explains the relationship between high speed and conventional railway networks (according to the vehicle types in operation on the network). The core of the paper is comprised of the methodology for choosing the best route for a railway line and its application to the high speed railway connection Praha – Brno. The Algorithm used assumes the existence of more route proposals, which could be different in terms of the operational conception, line routing or types of vehicles used. The optimal variant is the one with the lowest daily cost, which includes infrastructure and vehicle costs; investment and operational costs. The results from applying this model confirmed the assumption, that a dedicated high speed railway line, only for high speed trains, has the same or lower investment costs than a line for both high speed and conventional trains. Furthermore, a dedicated high line also has a lower cost for infrastructure maintenance but a higher cost for buying high speed multiple units.

Travel costs and urban specialization patterns: Evidence from China’s high speed railway system

How does intercity passenger transportation shape urban employment and specialization patterns? To shed light on this question I study China’s High Speed Railway (HSR), an unprecedentedly large-scale network that connected 81 cities from 2003 to 2014 with trains running at speeds over 200 km/h. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I find that an HSR connection increases city-wide passenger flows by 10% and employment by 7%. To deal with the issues of endogenous railway placement and simultaneous public investments accompanying HSR connection, I examine the impact of a city’s market access changes purely driven by the HSR connection of other cities. The estimates suggest that HSR-induced expansion in market access increases urban employment with an elasticity between 2 and 2.5. Further evidence on sectoral employment suggests that industries with a higher reliance on nonroutine cognitive skills benefit more from HSR-induced market access to other cities.

Excavation of the Aica-Mules pilot tunnel for the Brenner base tunnel: information gained on water inflows in tunnels in granitic massifs

The construction of the Aica-Mules tunnel, completed in 2010, provides a relevant case history for improving the knowledge of hydrogeological issues related to the excavation of deep tunnels in granitic massifs. The Aica-Mules tunnel is a 10 km-long structure, forming part of the high-speed railway connection between Austria and Italy across the Alpine chain, located at an average depth of 500–1,000 m below the surface. Prior to and during the construction, intense hydrogeological monitoring was set up, allowing the collection of abundant data concerning: (1) the evolution of water inflows into the tunnel; (2) the chemistry and temperature of drained groundwater; and (3) the influence of tunnel drainage on springs. Based on detailed analysis of geological/hydrogeological data, this article provides an insight into the permeability distribution in granitic rocks affected by relevant brittle tectonic deformation, and the consequences of water inflow during excavation. The available time series from the principal water discharges in the tunnel have been used in order to test the reliability of some of the most commonly applied analytical methods for the forecast of water inflows into tunnels.

고속철도 개통이 항공여객 수요변화에 미치는 영향 분석 - 서울-제주간 노선을 중심으로 -

Competition between air transportation and railways has grown fiercer in major countries around the world with the rise of high-speed railways. In South Korea, air passenger travel has been rapidly decreasing since the initial launch of the Seoul-Pusan KTX line in 2004 and second opening that followed in 2010. Further expansion of the high-speed railway is expected. At present, research efforts to verify the validity of constructing an underwater express railway tunnel between Ho-nam and Jeju Island are taking place. Considering the possible high speed railway connection between Seoul and Jeju Island, this thesis has analyzed the choice behavior of existing passengers of the major and low-cost carriers. For this, Stated Preference (SP) research has been performed for three variables, including fare, travel time and the number of runs, to estimate the substitution rate of each of the three variables. Binomial Logit Model has been estimated with the obtained data. The estimation of the model has found that airline passengers of major and low-cost carriers are willing to pay approximately 7,200 KRW and 5,000 KRW, respectively, to reduce travel time by one hour. If the number of runs in one day increases, it has been estimated that the passengers are willing to pay additional fares of about 390 KRW and 30 KRW, respectively. On the other hand, the substitution rate between the number of runs and the travel time was found to be somewhat insignificant. If the construction of the Seoul-Jeju line progresses in the future, this study could be used as preliminary data for determining fares, travel time and the number of runs.

Impact of sound and vibration of the North–South high-speed railway connection through the city of Antwerp Belgium

In the European High-Speed Train Network the infrastructure of the North–South connection in Antwerp needs significant modifications. For the section between Berchem and Antwerp Central Station the existing track on the high level embankment will be incorporated into concrete structures providing a three level track access to the station. For the section between Antwerp Central Station and Dam two drilled tunnels are planned providing the station with pass-through facilities instead of being an “end” station as at present. The paper focuses on the methods of practical research and the resulting measures regarding the impact of sound and vibration on the environment. An essential part of this study is the impact of the planned construction of a double railway tunnel underneath the city of Antwerp. At certain locations, the distance between the foundations of the houses and the top of the tunnel is only 4 m. The study considers the projected vibration levels on the rail, the tunnel invert, building foundations and upper floors of the buildings. Also the ground-borne noise is evaluated. The study identifies the measures necessary at the rail mounting level. As a result, a floating slab has been proposed and the effects on the environment are estimated.