High-speed Rail Investment Research Articles

To build or not to build? Competing narratives of high-speed rail development in Canada

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, there has been a resurgence of interest in high-speed rail (HSR). Those nations contemplating whether to invest in the technology typically encounter debate about the ‘true’ benefits and impacts of development. This article demonstrates the considerable degree of nuance within the great HSR debate. Using discussions of Canadian HSR as a case study, this article identifies three core narratives surrounding HSR development (herein named ‘Turbotrain’, ‘Ecotrain’, and ‘Zerotrain’) and seven distinct discourse coalitions which support various dimensions of these narratives. The article explains how various stakeholders’ views about how and whether HSR projects ‘ought’ to be carried out are shaped by their socio-ecological and politico-economic presuppositions. The categorization of HSR development narratives and the unveiling of their attendant presuppositions offer a novel way of examining the politics of mobility as it pertains to the HSR investment debates being held in many industrialized and industrializing countries today.

The Impact of High-Speed Rail Investment on Economic and Environmental Change in China: A Dynamic CGE Analysis

This study investigates the impact of high-speed rail investment on the economy and environment in China using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model with a focus on the period 2002-2013. The analysis is implemented in a dynamic recursive framework capturing long-run capital accumulation and labor market equilibrium. A national level impact was simulated through direct impact drivers including land use conversion, output expansion, cost reduction, productivity increase, transport demand substitution and induced demand. The results suggest that rail investment in China over the past two decades has been a positive stimulus to both the economy and social welfare, while the effect on CO2 emissions generation has been large. Overall, the economic and welfare contributions of rail investment are achieved primarily through induced demand and output expansion, whereas the contribution from a reduction of rail transportation costs and rail productivity increases were modest. In addition, negligible negative impacts from land use for rail development and the substitution effect among other modes were found. Emissions reduction from substitution of rail for other modes was small and overwhelmed by output expansion due to lowered rail transport costs and induced demand.

An optimization model of energy and transportation systems: Assessing the high-speed rail impacts in the United States

This paper presents a long-term investment planning model that co-optimizes infrastructure investments and operations across transportation and electric infrastructure systems for meeting the energy and transportation needs in the United States. The developed passenger transportation model is integrated within the modeling framework of a National Long-term Energy and Transportation Planning (NETPLAN) software, and the model is applied to investigate the impact of high-speed rail (HSR) investments on interstate passenger transportation portfolio, fuel and electricity consumption, and 40-year cost and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The results show that there are feasible scenarios under which significant HSR penetration can be achieved, leading to reasonable decrease in national long-term CO2 emissions and costs. At higher HSR penetration of approximately 30% relative to no HSR in the portfolio promises a 40-year cost savings of up to $0.63T, gasoline and jet fuel consumption reduction of up to 34% for interstate passenger trips, CO2 emissions reduction by about 0.8 billion short tons, and increased resilience against petroleum price shocks. Additionally, sensitivity studies with respect to light-duty vehicle mode share reveal that in order to realize such long-term cost and emission benefits, a change in the passenger mode choice is essential to ensure higher ridership for HSR.

A Ranking Methodology to Prioritise HSR Corridors: Analysis and Practice

The construction of new high-speed rail (HSR) lines, in a climate of financial instability since the onset of the global crisis of 2007-2008, has reopened the debate among the scientific community. Support for the new projects is facing serious concerns over the extremely elevated costs of high-speed and the ability of today's governments to fund or co-fund these systems. This is the main reason the assessment of methodologies to prioritise the construction of new High-Speed Rail (HSR) corridors has recently become an important issue for transport planners in countries like the U.S. where HSR does not exist.The literature on ranking tools for prioritising HSR corridors is practically non-existent, even in Europe. In 2009, a new ranking methodology was developed and applied to 30,000 city pairs in the U.S. to determine their suitability for high-speed rail investment. As none of these lines has been constructed and none of them are in operation, this methodology has not been validated. The main objective of this paper is to analyse, validate and improve this ranking tool using data from a current HSR network: the Spanish one. Results show the consistency of the model as a preliminary approach to ranking pairs, mainly for the top first O-D relations; however the model fails to discriminate clearly between secondary groups of corridors. These deficiencies are chiefly due to the type of variables used by the model which ultimately, after improved, would provide policymakers with a useful tool when planning the construction of a new HSR network.

A methodology for prioritising HSR corridors: from U.S. theory to Spanish practice

The assessment of methodologies to prioritise the construction of new high-speed rail (HSR) corridors has recently become a key issue for transport planners in countries like the U.S., where HSR does not exist. In a climate of financial instability since the onset of the global crisis of 2007–2008, support for new projects is being eroded by serious concerns over the extremely steep costs of high-speed rail, and there is a need for the scientific clarification of the procedure for prioritizing construction.In 2009 a new ranking methodology was developed and applied to 30,000 city pairs in the U.S. to determine their suitability for high-speed rail investment. The existing literature on ranking tools for prioritising HSR corridors is practically non-existent, and, as none of these U.S. lines has been built or put into in operation, this methodology has not been validated. The main aim of this paper is to contribute to these ranking models and highlight their importance in the HSR planning process. The preliminary ranking tool described in this work has been validated using data from the current HSR Spanish network. The results confirm the consistency of the model as a first approach to ranking pairs, mainly for the top O–D relations; however the model has some drawbacks chiefly due to the type of variables used, and their assigned weightings. Finally, some specific improvements are proposed for this ranking approach in order to provide policymakers with a useful tool when planning the construction of new HSR networks.

The construction of a HSR network using a ranking methodology to prioritise corridors

The construction of new high-speed rail (HSR) lines, in a climate of financial instability since the onset of the global crisis of 2007–2008, has reopened the debate among the scientific community. Support for the new projects is facing serious concerns over the extremely elevated costs of high-speed and the ability of today's governments to fund or co-fund these systems. This is the main reason the assessment of methodologies to prioritise the construction of new high-speed rail (HSR) corridors has recently become an important issue for transport planners in countries like the U.S. where HSR does not exist.The literature on ranking tools for prioritising HSR corridors is practically non-existent, even in Europe. In 2009, a new ranking methodology was developed and applied to 30,000 city pairs in the U.S. to determine their suitability for high-speed rail investment. As none of these lines has been constructed and none of them are in operation, this methodology has not been validated. The main objective of this paper is to analyse, validate and improve this ranking tool using data from a current HSR network: the Spanish one. Results show the consistency of the model as a preliminary approach to ranking pairs, mainly for the top first O–D relations; however the model fails to discriminate clearly between secondary groups of corridors. These deficiencies are chiefly due to the type of variables used by the model which ultimately, after improved, would provide policymakers with a useful tool when planning the construction of a new HSR network.

Territorial Implications of High-Speed Rail—A Spanish Perspective

Territorial Implications of High-Speed Rail—A Spanish Perspective

A note on high-speed rail investments and travelers’ value of time

High-speed rail (HSR) is designed for travellers with high value of time. HSR offers fast and reliable services and good possibilities for work during the journey. Surprisingly, these benefits of HSR investments are often appraised with travel-time value of people who use conventional train services. This note considers under what circumstances the assumption that the value of time remains unchanged by the speed improvement induces a significant bias in appraisals. We first outline some conceptual points with a modal-mix model where travellers have varying value of time and then discuss how this could affect the social profitability of three recently constructed or proposed HSR lines: Oslo–Stockholm (Norway and Sweden), Stockholm–Göteborg (Sweden) and Beijing–Shanghai Hongqiao (China). We conclude that economic evaluations of HSR line should at the least be complemented by a sensitivity analysis of the possible effect of a change of the composition of travellers with various values of travel time.

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

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.

Is there any economic justification for high-speed railways in the United States?

Despite intense media and political attention, the economic impacts of high speed rail (HSR) have been insufficiently addressed. This article discusses the benefits and costs of HSR from an economic perspective. Only two of HSR service in the world--the lines between Paris and Lyon in France and the line between Tokyo and Osaka in Japan-- cover their full costs without subsidies. The HSR services proposed for the United States differ significantly from these two lines in terms of geography and structure. These fundamental differences suggest that HSR in the United States might not be a success from a purely financial standpoint. HSR is often promoted in terms of improving social welfare, including shifting travelers from more congested and environmentally-harmful transportation modes. However, questions remain regarding whether even these social benefits will be significant enough to make HSR a worthwhile investment. The author concludes that any U.S. investment in HSR should be carefully targeted and customized to actual circumstances rather than given to meet the arbitrary goals of piecemeal projects.

Territorial cohesion impacts of high-speed rail at different planning levels

The assessment of the impacts of high-speed rail (HSR) projects on territorial cohesion has recently emerged as an important issue for transport planners. HSR networks are usually designed to interconnect strong economic centers efficiently. Hence, the greatest improvements in accessibility concentrate near HSR stations, whereas intermediate locations suffer from comparatively lower accessibility benefits. Negative territorial cohesion impacts appear if HSR ultimately results in a more polarized spatial distribution of accessibility levels.There has so far been little research aimed at exploring the implications of the definition of the geographical limits of study area in the measurement of HSR territorial cohesion impacts. In this context, this paper presents a Geographical Information System (GIS)-based methodology which analyzes changes in the territorial distribution of accessibility resulting from HSR investments. These changes are analyzed at different planning levels, in order to assess the sensitivity of territorial cohesion results to scale definition.The methodology is tested by its application to the development of the 670km of the Galician (north-western) HSR corridor included in the Spanish PEIT (Strategic Transport and Infrastructure Plan) 2005–2020. Cohesion impacts are assessed at different direct planning levels: regional, corridor and national levels, as well from the perspective of spillover effects. In all cases, the construction of the HSR corridor increases the accessibility values, and results show positive cohesion effects at the national and corridor levels, whereas at the regional level both balancing and polarization effects appear. These differences are mainly due to the location of HSR stations or to the quality of the transport network from the surrounding cities to the station, which determines the territorial distribution of accessibility improvements. Similar results are found from the spillover perspective.

Cost-Benefit Analysis of High-Speed Rail Link between Hong Kong and Mainland China

The Legislative Council in Hong Kong has approved a funding of USD$8.60 billion to build the high-speed rail (HSR) line linking mainland China. HSR is a break-through technology that allows trains running at a speed over 250 km per hour. The most controversial part of the HSR investment is whether its cost could be compensated by the social benefits. In this study, a cost-benefit analysis of the Hong Kong to mainland HSR (HKM-HSR) line is carried out. First, all the direct and indirect costs, and social benefits are defined; then, monetary equivalents are assigned to these elements; third, all the future values are discounted into present values and aggregated. The results show that the project has a positive net present value (NPV) up to USD$2,068.49 million, which proves that the investment is worth. In addition, other transport alternatives, i.e. the existing roadway and conventional railway, are examined and compared with HKM- HSR, which unveils that HSR has the largest positive NPV among these three passenger transportation modes because of its excellent performance in ticket revenue, travel time savings and safety improvement.

The role of high-speed rail in mitigating climate change – The Swedish case Europabanan from a life cycle perspective

In this paper a life cycle perspective is used to analyse Europabanan, a proposed high-speed rail track in Sweden. The life cycle emissions reductions are found to be 550,000 tons of CO 2-equivalents per annum by 2025/2030 with almost 60% of this coming from a shift from truck to rail freight and 40% from a shift from air and road travel to high-speed rail travel. In contexts similar to Sweden, it is thus an important issue whether a large increase is required in freight rail capacity anyway, since high-speed rail investments may not be justified for the passenger markets alone. The study also indicates that a substantial share of emissions due to construction of the new railway could be counterbalanced through the reduced need for building and maintaining roads and airports, and for manufacturing cars.

The BCA of HSR: Should the Government Invest in High Speed Rail Infrastructure?

This paper deals with public investment in High-Speed Rail (HSR) infrastructure and tries to understand the economic rationale for allocating public money to the construction of new HSR lines. The examination of data on costs and demand shows that the case for investing in HSR requires several conditions to be met: an ex ante high volume of traffic in the corridor where the new lines are built, significant time savings, high average willingness of potential users to pay, the release of capacity in the conventional rail network and airports. On the contrary, net environmental benefits seem to be insignificant in influencing the social desirability of HSR investment. This paper discusses, within a cost-benefit analysis framework, under which conditions the expected benefits could justify the investment in HSR projects.

Evaluating alternative scenarios for high-speed rail investment in Greece

Introducing High-Speed Rail services along the two main corridors in Greece is expected to change the total scene of interurban transport. The present paper considers the effects of the high-speed rail investment plan against this background. It applies a three-fold evaluation process in order to assess the transport potential and the economic and other impacts of the investment. Alternative scenarios are considered with respect to construction period and pricing of the new high-speed services.

Transportation system in the future

The paper begins with a review of the major features of the transport policy of the European Community. It continues with an assessment of the likely characteristics of future transport supply, identifying the particular competing developments in road and air transport which would affect the success of high speed rail investments such as that proposed between Amsterdam, Groningen and Hamburg.