Rail Connection Research Articles

Rail Connections between Poland and Neighbouring States

Rail Connections between Poland and Neighbouring States

The Impact of a New Container Port on the Greenhouse Gas Pollution

Abstract Background Large vessels that call at European ports will have to pay for their CO2 emissions from transporting cargo that enters or goes from a European port since January 2024. The costs will increase with increasing global trade. This results in a higher pollution level, including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions like CO2. Methods/ Approach Based on the gravity model embedded in a global supply chain, we developed a model to evaluate maritime transport pollution in case a new, sufficiently large container port becomes operational. Additionally, we consider how lousy railway connections to European customers increase transportation costs and pollution. Results The approach to the well-connected sequences of gravity models in the intercontinental maritime chains evaluates the differences in quantities of cargo between ports when a new port is opened, and the waiting time does not change. We also highlight that poor rail connections can reduce this positive effect. Conclusions We showed how it is possible to estimate the optimal capacity of a new port with a multi-level gravity model and how this would affect the pollution around the port and on the routes from the port to the final consumers.

Unveiling the green path: How urban openness reduces pollution and paves the way to sustainability

This study investigates the relationship between openness and pollutant emission intensity across 286 Chinese cities from 1990 to 2019, aiming to evaluate the potential environmental benefits of open economy strategies. The findings indicate that enhanced urban openness significantly lowers pollutant emission intensity. To ensure the robustness of our findings, we make an innovative attempt to employ high-speed rail connection and motorway density as instrumental variables to address potential endogeneity issues, corroborating the reliability of the results through various robustness tests. Moreover, we also find the heterogeneous effects of urban openness on pollution emissions, highlighting the moderating influences of trade complexity, urbanization level, and environmental regulatory intensity. Lastly, the study elucidates the mechanisms through which urban openness diminishes pollution emissions, namely fostering green innovation capacity and enhancing public environmental awareness. This research makes theoretical contributions on understanding the nexus between open economies and environmental protection while offering practical insights to inform governmental environmental policy formulation.

Transport accessibility changes in metropolitan regions: high-speed rail connection frequency estimation

This article focuses on a very narrowly specific segment of this issue, considering the impacts of HSR in the long term, not as transport arteries connecting the most important metropolitan areas but, on the contrary, as an internal factor of development within a metropolitan region. The paper aims to transfer the present operational European HSR commuting connection frequency experience to a generally applicable frequency estimation formula. Through a quantitative approach, the research analyses the total sample of 1,446 train connections from 10 European metropolitan regions. It answers the secondary research question of what the range of accessibility change between the metropolitan core and the intermediate city is after introducing HSR connection inside metropolitan regions in the time of 1 hour of journey. The estimation model formula calculates the optimal number of HSR connections between the metropolitan core and intermediate city in the HSR developing countries. It is derived and verified from the analysed dataset values. The potential operational change scenarios are presented and described based on the example of 34 metropolitan city pairs.

Optimizing sustainable multimodal distribution networks in the context of carbon pricing, with a case study in the Thai sugar industry

Transportation is a major cause of energy consumption and emissions which can be reduced by optimizing routings and using alternative modes of transport. This paper relates to the strategic design of multimodal transportation networks. It presents a general model of green vehicle routing problems that supports strategic decision-making by identifying optimal solutions and provides data on costs and emissions. Three general linear programming models were developed that optimize multimodal distribution networks that could be applied in many industries. Model I evaluates carbon emissions; model II assesses carbon emissions and capacity constraints; and model III establishes total costs including transportation, handling, storage, fuel and carbon costs.Thailand is the third largest world sugar exporter in the world and is piloting carbon pricing, which will affect energy intensive industries, including the sugar industry. The models are applied using data obtained from a collaborating company. The research contributed to practice by informing managerial decisions relating to the export of sugar from the factory. This included evaluating the possible use of a dry port with rail connections, which could reduce transportation and carbon costs by 54.3 % and facilitate the building of another factory to increase exports.

THAILAND’S JOURNEY WITH CHINA’S BELT AND ROAD: A NINE-YEAR ODYSSEY UNDER GENERAL PRAYUT’S LEADERSHIP (2014-2023)

This article examines Thailand’s participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) during General Prayut Chan-o-cha’s government between 2014 and 2023. The study underscores the aftermath of the 2014 coup, which saw a surge in the Sino-Thai relationship. Notably, the Prayut government hastily announced a commitment with Beijing for the ambitious 608-kilometer Bangkok-Nong Khai high-speed rail project, a key component of the BRI rail network connecting Kunming through Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. Substantial progress was anticipated for the high-speed rail project once the first phase of construction connecting Bangkok to Nong Khai gained approval through an executive decree in 2017. However, as of May 2023, only 3.5 kilometres of the proposed 608-kilometer rail track had been completed, raising questions about the government’s commitment. Meanwhile, BRI-related projects have expanded, including the development of high-speed rail connections between Don Mueang, Suvarnabhumi, and U-Tapao airports, as well as investments in the Eastern Economic Corridor. The study delves into the complexities of the Prayut government’s foreign policy decisions and their implementation. It examines how international and domestic factors influenced the formulation and subsequent execution of the BRI projects in Thailand. This research offers valuable insights into the intricate interplay between international negotiations and domestic politics, shedding light on the dynamics of the Sino-Thai BRI partnership.

Information effects of high-speed rail: Evidence from patent citations in China

Using high-speed rail (HSR) connection information and patent citation data, we find robust patterns linking HSR connection with increased patent citations between Chinese cities. Furthermore, HSR connection is shown to slow down the decay in knowledge diffusion over distance. The main results are not only robust to alternative choices of city sample, HSR connection measure, citation measure, and citation windows, as well as other tests, but also remain when the endogeneity concern is addressed. And evidence has been found that academic conferences and the establishment of non-local subsidiaries serve as mechanisms through which HSR connection affects cross-regional knowledge spillovers. The heterogeneity effects of HSR connection are also in line with expectations, where cities with larger innovation capacity gaps, industries with higher delivery costs and faster technological upgrading, and patents with more technological innovation content experience greater impacts of HSR connection. These findings thus provide consistent support for the beneficial effects of transportation infrastructure upgrading on knowledge transfer and technological innovation.

Is distance really dying? Transportation and knowledge spillovers

AbstractEnhanced transportation infrastructure improves the frequency of travel and facilitates face‐to‐face communication. Will the resulting reduction in travel cost mitigate the geographical concentration of knowledge spillovers? Our empirical strategy exploits China's mass expansion of its intercity high‐speed railway network as a natural experiment. Using patent citations as the proxy for knowledge spillovers, we find inventors increasingly rely on more distant knowledge after rail connection and newly connect cities' innovation performance improves substantially.

Commuting, Labor, and Housing Market Effects of Mass Transportation: Welfare and Identification

Abstract I study Los Angeles Metro Rail's effects using panel data on bilateral commuting flows, a quantitative spatial model, and historically motivated quasi-experimental research designs. The model separates transit's commuting effects from local productivity or amenity effects, and spatial shift-share instruments identify inelastic labor and housing supply. Metro Rail connections increase commuting by 16% but do not have large effects on local productivity or amenities. Metro Rail generates $94 million in annual benefits by 2000 or 12–25% of annualized costs. Accounting for reduced congestion and slow transit adoption adds, at most, another $200 million in annual benefits.

Is high-speed rail a sustainable mobility option? A life-cycle assessment of the Basque Y project in Spain

The Basque Y High Speed Rail connection between Madrid and the Basque Autonomous Community is, quite exceptionally, a mixed freight and passengers HSR line, that has been presented as a fundamental step towards a more sustainable mobility. In this paper, a life-cycle assessment (LCA) is conducted to assess the environmental performance of the line throughout its lifetime, based on the latest data available, including both construction and maintenance burdens. Results show that this new corridor is not justified in terms of reducing emissions and energy consumption, mainly due to its low transport density. It also has a negligible impact on Spanish current low rail freight traffic. We conclude, therefore, that Spain needs to reconsider its AVE network expansion if aiming at increasing rail's modal share and meeting the emissions targets set by the EU. From a policy perspective, many information inconsistencies have been found regarding the demand projections of freight transport, which cast serious doubt about the decision-making process behind Trans-European transport projects.

Cross-border mobility: Rail or road? Space-time-lines as an evidence base for policy debates

ABSTRACT Mobility and transport patterns in border regions are highly relevant topics, as these regions still tend to be areas of limited accessibility, embedded in complex political settings of transport policy. Moreover, the contemporary call for a transition to sustainable mobility applies also to border regions. Nevertheless, limited data availability and harmonization across borders hamper the debate. In this paper, we develop a methodological approach that builds on open-source data and allows for comparative analysis and visualization of cross-border mobility and accessibility. The key elements are “space-time-lines’, combined with an indexation approach. Our study aims to position the different means of transportation in border regions. More concretely speaking, we seek to answer three main questions: In which regional settings are rail or road connections quicker? Can we identify categories of accessibility patterns? How do domestic und cross-border accessibility relate? We respond to these questions with a rail and road accessibility analysis of German border regions from a comparative perspective. Our results show that (a) the catch-up process for cross-border accessibility is not yet complete and that (b) some regions show tunnel effects, as cross-border infrastructure improvements can bypass the border region in the local sense.

The spatial impact of high-speed rail on firm performance: The role of proximity to urban cores

This paper examines the spatial impact of high-speed rail (HSR) connection on firm performance in China at the micro level using a unique administrative dataset. Connected firms benefit from agglomeration economies and improved market access, but the redistribution of production inputs towards urban cores may have a negative impact on firms in peripheral regions. If these opposing forces are both subject to spatial decay but at different rates, proximity to urban cores could play a crucial role in determining the overall effects of HSR connection on firms. We find that connected firms located farther from urban cores benefit the most, indicating a steeper spatial decay in the redistribution effect relative to the agglomeration effect. This research enhances our understanding of the micro-level spatial impact of HSR on regional development.

Information search costs and trade credit: evidence from high-speed rail connections

We investigate the impact of information search costs on firms’ access to trade credit used as a major source of interfirm financing. Using the openings of high-speed rails (HSR) in China as exogenous shocks, we find that firms located in cities with HSR connections receive more trade credit from their suppliers. Further analyses show that the HSR effect on trade credit concentrates among customers with poor information transparency and that HSR openings improve the customers’ information environment, suggesting that a decline in information search costs promotes supplier financing. Our finding reveals a positive externality of HSR construction on interfirm financing.

Connecting up embedded knowledge across Northern Powerhouse cities

One of the driving rationales behind plans for major transport investment between Northern UK cities is that of connecting labour pools. Integrated labour pools, the argument goes, will give rise to agglomeration economies and subsequent growth. Behind this logic lies the idea that access to complementary skills in neighbouring cities will yield benefits for firms. Yet, at what travel time radius is access to these skills beneficial? Can a better understanding of this inform our assessment of the likely economic impact of proposed transport investments and subsequent reductions in travel times? Here we develop a method to estimate this radius based on the relationship between industry employment growth in a city and the size of employment in ‘skill-related’ sectors. Assuming car or rail travel, we find that for Northern cities the radius is around 45 min while for the South it is around 110 min. Manufacturing peaks around 45 min for the whole UK, including both North and South. Services, however, peak around 110 min in the South but 70 min in the North. A comparison between the UK’s Integrated Rail Plan and earlier proposals to invest in High Speed 2 rail and Northern rail connections uncovers lost opportunities for employment growth in Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield. This study provides a road-map for the deployment of methods from Evolutionary Economic Geography, originally developed to predict regional and urban growth and diversification processes as a function of the local skill mix, to evaluate the potential gains from transport infrastructure schemes.

From the city of steel to Germany’s ‘China City’: economic restructuring, the EU–China transcontinental railway and infrastructure-led development in Duisburg

ABSTRACT This paper critically evaluates the prevailing World Bank recommendation for city-regions to drive infrastructure-led development through targeted spatial plans. Introducing a novel analytical framework to conceptualize Duisburg's evolution into the primary European gateway for the EU–China transcontinental railway, the paper demonstrates how key actors and institutions operating across multiple scales enabled this previously deindustrializing German city to benefit from the new transcontinental rail connection. It argues that one-off spatial planning is insufficient for actualizing infrastructure-led development: this process involves a dynamic interaction with inherited industrial pathways that recursively stimulates the repurposing and/or the revision of infrastructure-oriented developmental plans.

Diversification or specialization: Measuring the impact of high-speed rail connection on technological diversity in China

Technological diversification and specialization have important roles in explaining volatility, innovation, income inequality, exports, and related concerns; however, the relationships between transportation improvement and technological diversification and specialization remains unexplored. Using Chinese city-level panel data, we investigate the impact of China's high-speed rail (HSR) connection on technological diversity using the difference-in-differences method and instrumental variable regressions. The results demonstrate that HSR connection leads to reductions in technological diversity, particularly in core cities, cities along the four longest HSR lines, and cities that were initially diversified. The findings indicate that HSR connection is conducive to technological specialization rather than diversification, offering new insights for understanding the relationship between transportation improvement and innovation and determining that HSR connection spurs intra-industry knowledge spillovers more than inter-industry knowledge spillovers.

To the issue of organization of rail connection of Vyshgorod and Kyiv

To the issue of organization of rail connection of Vyshgorod and Kyiv

Making Wine for the People’s Taste: The Emergence of the Argentine Wine Industry, 1885–1915

It is common to use the adjective infant when referring to the early development of any industry. For the Argentine wine industry, adulthood came shockingly fast. Take-off began in 1885 with completion of the rail connection between the province of Mendoza, the major production area, and Buenos Aires, the primary consumer market. Between 1901 and 1915 alone, production rose 90.4 percent, permitting what had been an artisan industry to become the fifth-largest wine producer in the world. The major component for the emergence of the wine industry was the enormous wave of largely Mediterranean immigrants who arrived in the country. This article explores the various factors that explain Argentina’s explosive wine industry growth. They include entrepreneurial decision-making, the importation and adaptation of technology, the role of a supportive national state, and most importantly, the impact that immigrant consumers’ wine culture and expectations had on the formation of what would subsequently be a century-long model of winemaking in Argentina.

Breaking the isolation Kingdom of Serbia and the Adriatic railroad 1906-1908

Between 1906 and 1908, the Kingdom of Serbia undertook a comprehensive diplomatic effort aimed at establishing a rail connection between the Danube and the Adriatic Sea. The article first provides a brief overview of the project?s rationale. Following that, it delves into the positions of individual countries regarding the proposed initiative, covering those who offered financial and political support, as well as those who actively sought to thwart the project. Ultimately, the article points to a particular Balkan infrastructural predicament. The Adriatic Railroad project, despite obvious economic benefits, had international support above all because it had the potential to influence the balance of power in the region. This potential was, at the same time, the reason why the project had powerful opponents and why it eventually failed.

Observing Spatiotemporal Inconsistency of Erosion and Accretion in the Barak River Using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques

Alluvial rivers all over the world have one common problem, which is their meandering pattern. This meander formation is because of natural and anthropogenic processes. Barak River is dynamic, and due to this, it is exposed to regular shifting and creates many problems for the people who reside near the river. The livelihood of many people depends on agriculture, which they conduct on the nearby sides of the river. However, the regular shifting of riverbanks makes their life miserable and leads to severe economic losses. Further, roadways and railways run along the banks of the Barak River, and during monsoon, Assam (Silchar), along with three states, Mizoram, Manipur, and Tripura, become disconnected from the rest of India because the road and rail connections fail due to riverbank erosion. Therefore, considering the catchment area and the importance of this river, we have tried to understand the spatiotemporal changes (erosion, deposition, and unchanged area) in the Barak River. From our analysis, we found that the maximum and minimum amount of erosion occurred from 2012–2017 and 2002–2012 and were 727.56 ha and 332.69 ha, respectively. While the highest amount of deposition that occurred during 1984–2017 was 1054.21 ha, the minimum amount of deposition that occurred during 2012–2017 was 351.32. Overall, it was identified that the area under the deposition was more dynamic than the erosion from 1984–2017. Moreover, from the temporal analysis of land use/land cover from 1984–2017, it was found that the area that comes under the settlement and arable land has increased by 10.47% and 5.05%, respectively. The dynamic factors, such as the nature of channel gradient, land use/land cover, and riparian vegetative cover, could be the probable driving forces that cause changes in the erosional and depositional areas. This study will help us understand the dynamics of the Barak River and other rivers of this type worldwide. This study shall help implement strategies that will help manage bank erosion by adapting scientific bank protection measures.