Railway Network In China Research Articles

Connectivity and Accessibility of the Railway Network in China: Guidance for Spatial Balanced Development

Good connectivity and accessibility help to enhance the competitiveness of regions and countries. This research provides a detailed analysis of the connectivity and accessibility of the Chinese railway network. The studied period starts in 1949 and ends in 2017. The research scope covers the railway system of the entire country (except Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao). Instead of focusing on main cities as research objects, this paper provides more detailed insights by using counties as the basic research units. The analysis shows that the achieved connectivity has been increasing continuously over the study period. Four accessibility indicators (temporal location indicator, weighted average travel time, daily accessibility, and potential indicator) provide comprehensive and complementary results, indicating that the most accessible cities and units are located in the southeastern part of the Hu line. In addition, higher economic level, or higher population density, is correlated with higher accessibility. Furthermore, the current network exhibits an unbalanced spatial distribution pattern, with an underdeveloped west. All the indicators show that the accessibility of the northwest and southwest regions is the lowest. Based on these conclusions, regional policy-making suggestions can be made to guide a rational railway network expansion and facilitate the equality and sustainable economic development of regions. The future railway system development is suggested to focus more on enhancing inner and inter-region communication in the west of China and attach importance to poverty-stricken counties in support of balanced regional growth and development. The railway development of the eastern regions needs to focus on optimizing the structure of the network as well as reasonably organizing railway routes.

The Distribution Pattern of the Railway Network in China at the County Level

Evaluation of the railway network distribution and its impacts on social and economic development has great significance for building an efficient and comprehensive railway system. To address the lack of evaluation indicators to assess the railway network distribution pattern at the macro scale, this study selects eight indicators—railway network density, railway network proximity, the shortest travel time, train frequency, population, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the gross industrial value above designated size, and fixed asset investment—as the basis of an integrated railway network distribution index which is used to characterize China’s railway network distribution using geographical information system (GIS) technology. The research shows that, in 2015, the railway network distribution was low in almost half of China’s counties and that there were obvious differences in distribution between counties in the east and west. In addition, multiple dense areas of railway network distribution were identified. The results suggest that it might be advisable to strengthen the connections between large and small cities in the eastern region and that the major urban agglomerations in the midwest could focus on strengthening the construction of railway facilities to increase the urban vitality of the western region. This study can be used to guide the optimization of railway network structures and provide a macro decision-making reference for the planning and evaluation of major railway projects in China.

Spatial structure evolution of China railway network in the past century

Abstract. With rapid development of big data technologies urbanization, the railway networks have also developed rapidly. The optimization of various aspects of railway networks has become more and more important with the shift of main contradictions in our society. With more than one hundred years of development of China railway network expansion, especially under the driving of “one belt and one road”, China railway network is gradually mature. Up to now, the total length of China railways ranks second in the world, with a mileage of 127,000 km. The spatial service scope of railway network has been further expanded and the structure has become more and more perfect, which has brought positive impacts on the development of all aspects of China. This paper analyzes the railways (lines) and stations (points) in five different development stages in China in the past 100 years, by means of spatial statistical and nuclear density analysis, based on which the spatial accessibility in different periods is calculated using cost distance analysis. The results show that the distribution of spatial pattern in Middle East region is higher than that in west region. The accessibility shows a significant difference between east and west, that the eastern region is superior to the western region. The difference of spatial pattern between the north and the south of Yangtze river is obvious. The overall spatial pattern presents a concentric structure, radiating from the North China region to the surrounding areas, and the reachable time from the North China region to the East China and Central South regions is gradually increasing.The conclusions of the study are as follows:(1) The coverage region of China railways has been expanded.Since the completion of the first self-built railway (Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway), the total length of China railways,has expanded from 5006.5 km in 1911 to 127,000 km in the end of 2017, which means it has increased by 253.6 times over 100 years, with an average annual growth rate of 1,1933.9 km. The coverage of China Railways has expanded from 21 provinces in 1911 to all the provinces.(2) The development of the time accessibility of the China railway network takes a favorable trend. The railway network has gradually improved,after more than 100 years’ development. In 1911, the number of prefecture-level stations connected by the China railway network was only 62. By 2000, 83.6% of prefecture-level stations in China had been connected, and the number of connected ground-level stations reached 276. In 2018, more than 3066 ground-level stations have been connected,reaching time reduced from 1030 hours in 1911 to 64 hours in 2018. For example, the time from Beijing to Shanghai was shortened from more than 30 hours to 4 hours, saving about 8 times than before. It provides an important guarantee for the exchange of information between various regions in China.(3) The overall expansion of China railway network presents an expansion from the coastal areas to inland areas. A detailed analysis of the seven major economic zones shows the expansion is from Bohai Economic Zone to other economic zones. After five stages of development, the sites in the eastern, central and western regions accounted for 28%, 33% and 38% respectively of the total. The spatial distribution of the sites in the eastern, central and western regions gradually became balanced, but the degree of perfection still differed.

A discussion on technologies for improving the operational speed of high-speed railway networks

Abstract: China’s high-speed railway network has already achieved speeds of 350 km/h; however, this could be further increased to 400 km/h. After considering the development status and technical level of the high-speed railway system in China, this study indicates that there are four key technologies involved in improving its operational speed: the track, the electrical moving unit, the control system and the traction power supply. Through an experimental analysis, an evaluation index for the high-speed railway is then constructed based on four aspects: safety, comfort, intelligence and environmental protection. Using this system, the rationality of the high-speed railway speed-improvement plan can be scientifically evaluated. The results are of practical significance to the Chinese railway administration, as they can be used to formulate specific plans to increase rail speeds, and therefore promote the rapid development of the high-speed railway network in China.

Freight service network design with heterogeneous preferences for transport time and reliability

Value of time and value of reliability are two important user attributes that reflect shippers’ behavioral preferences, and as such influence the design of transport service networks. As shippers preferences will vary widely, it is important to consider these variations between users in the design of service networks. Up to now, network design research has ignored the combined use of time and reliability valuations for heterogeneous user populations. The objective of this paper is to address these attributes in a model for freight service network design targeting service performance improvement. We present a new frequency based service network design model with transshipments, capacity constraints and heterogeneous users. We apply the model to demonstrate that including heterogeneity explicitly in network design pays off in terms of an improved user performance of the network. A case study is conducted for a railway network in China. Values of time and reliability are estimated from a recent Stated Preference survey and used to determine distinct user classes. The proposed optimization problem is solved using an improved Simulated Annealing based heuristic method, for the case of the aggregate user group and the case of two distinct classes. Results show that by taking variations in shippers’ VOT and VOR into account, users’ total generalized cost is reduced while service levels improve. We conclude that incorporating heterogeneous VOT and VOR into the service network design problem is of interest for decisions on network investments.

Characterizing the Structure of the Railway Network in China: A Complex Weighted Network Approach

Understanding the structure of the Chinese railway network (CRN) is crucial for maintaining its efficiency and planning its future development. To advance our knowledge of CRN, we modeled CRN as a complex weighted network and explored the structural characteristics of the network via statistical evaluations and spatial analysis. Our results show CRN as a small-world network whose train flow obeys power-law decaying, demonstrating that CRN is a mature transportation infrastructure with a scale-free structure. CRN also shows significant spatial heterogeneity and hierarchy in its regionally uneven train flow distribution. We then examined the nodal centralities of CRN using four topological measures: degree, strength, betweenness, and closeness. Nodal degree is positively correlated with strength, betweenness, and closeness. Unlike the common feature of a scale-free network, the most connected nodes in CRN are not necessarily the most central due to underlying geographical, political, and socioeconomic factors. We proposed an integrated measure based on the four centrality measures to identify the global role of each node and the multilayer structure of CRN and confirm that stable connections hold between different layers of CRN.

The location-allocation model for multi-classification-yard location problem

This paper proposes a bi-level programming model for the multi-classification-yard location (MCYL) problem. The upper-level is intended to find an optimal establishment or improvement strategy for candidate nodes with a budget constraint, which is involved with the selection of potential yard locations and the determination of yard size and capacity. The lower-level aims to obtain the least costly plan of railcar reclassification considering yard classification capacity and tracks, on the basis of the strategy given by the upper-level. A simulated annealing (SA) algorithm is then applied to solve the MCYL problem of a large-scale China railway network.

The structural and spatial properties of the high-speed railway network in China: A complex network perspective

High-speed railway (HSR) has been one of the most important transport modes for developing cities. The development and achievement of HSR in China has attracted attention from around the world. Previous studies on HSR primarily focused on its impacts on regional development, the environment and the socio-economy. The structural and spatial properties of the HSR network have been neglected if not all. This article takes China's high-speed railway network (CHSRN) as an example and converted it into a weighted network using a P-space approach. The structural and spatial properties of CHSRN at the node and network levels are explored. The degree, strength and betweenness centralities of cities in CHSRN are calculated and analyzed. An integrated indicator based on the centrality measures is proposed to quantify the overall role of each city in CHSRN. The small-world property of CHSRN is examined, and the scale-free, spatial heterogeneity and hierarchical properties of CHSRN are examined in terms of train flow intensity. Possible factors affecting the structure and spatial properties of CHSRN are also explored.

Approach and application on high-speed train stop plan for better passenger transfer efficiency: the China case

ABSTRACTA customer-oriented dynamic cyclical adjustment approach is applied to optimize a high-speed railway train stop plan, which includes five steps that should be repeated until reasonable passenger transfer efficiency is reached. First, an improved Frank-Wolfe algorithm is used to assign passenger flow. Second, the obtained train stop plan is evaluated. Finally, the evaluation result is used as a feedback to adjust the train stop plan, a new line plan scheme with new train stop plan is obtained, and another passenger flow distribution is applied. A numerical experiment is carried out by taking the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway network in China as a background.

A Comparative Analysis of the Characteristics of High-Speed Railway Network in China’s Metropolitan Areas

<em>The role of high-speed rail network in the metropolitan areas is becoming more and more important, which has become one of the main ways of the city personnel contacts. This paper mainly uses the social network analysis method to revamp the six national metropolitan areas: metropolitan area of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, metropolitan area of Hachang, metropolitan area of Chengyu, metropolitan area of Yangtze River Delta, metropolitan area of Zhongyuan, metropolitan area of Beibu Gulf make a comparative analysis. The macroscopic and microscopic angles are used to calculate and compare the overall network characteristics, centrality, core-periphery structure and cohesion subgroups. It is mainly due to the fact that the high-speed rail network structure of the six major metropolitan areas needs to be improved. Metropolitan area of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and metropolitan area of Zhongyuan are relatively good the integrity and the connectivity. Metropolitan area of Yangtze River Delta is the highest utilization rate of resources. Metropolitan area of Hachang is the highest network density. Metropolitan area of Chengyu is outstanding between core and periphery. Metropolitan area of Beibu Gulf network of organizations is broken. Therefore, when layout of high-speed rail infrastructure, we should consider the high-speed rail network resource utilization, balance high-speed rail traffic within the metropolitan areas, thus enhancing the city’s high-speed rail accessibility and convenience.</em>

Research on determination of the scale of parking space on High Speed Rail Station, using East Ji’nan Station as an example

With the rapid growth of High-Speed Railway network in China, more and more stations has been designed. Based on the work of planning practice, this article has analyzed the influencing factors of proper supplement of parking space in High-Speed Railway Stations with analogy and parking turnover method, and taking East Ji’nan High-Speed Railway Station as an example to give recommended values.

Comprehensive optimization of the one-block and two-block train formation plan

Different from the traditional multi-step train formation plan optimization, which generates the one-block train formation plan firstly and then combines some one-block trains to form two-block trains, this paper presents a comprehensive optimization model which considers the one-block train and two-block train simultaneously. The model consists of three sub-problems: shipment routing, shipment-to-block assignment and block-to-train assignment. The objective of this model is to deliver all of the commodities with the minimum car-hour consumption at the technical yards while satisfying the network capacity constraints. A heuristic optimization approach based on the ant colony system is proposed to solve the model. The test results based on practical examples in northeast China railway network show that the one-block and two-block train formation plan obtained by using the comprehensive optimization model and approach proposed in this paper can significantly reduce the total car-hour consumption at the technical yards compared with the train formation plan which only uses the one-block train. The comprehensive optimization can achieve better results than the traditional multi-step optimization.

Research on Generating for Train Paths in Traffic Interruption Conditions on China Railway Network

When railway emergency lead to traffic interruption for some sections, it is indispensable for railway administration to take some urgent processing measures for transporting detained passengers and trains. This paper focuses on the method of generating train paths in traffic interruption conditions and proposed the idea that signal system compatibility is a considerable factor in the procedure of searching paths. On the basis of this idea, it was designed that the algorithm of generating train path in terms of adequate capacity strategy. The core of the algorithm is recursive dijkstra algorithm. Finally, we confirmed the practicability of algorithm through an example. The result showed that the proposed algorithm for generating train feasible paths provides references to the organization of railway traffic organization in traffic interruption conditions.

System Planning of Route Diagram for China Railway Passengers Based on Network and Ergonomics

AbstractFocus on the China Railway network and its planar route diagram for passengers, this study further extends network analysis to the representation of the railway network. After detail system analysis, backbone framework for the China Railway and its high-speed railway network is identified. With a straight-line principle, planning horizon till the year of 2020, and ergonomic pictogram measures, a brand new route diagram for China Railway passengers is created. This diagram will convey a new image and modern information of China Railway to meet the demand of passengers and the requirement of ever-expanding network.

Modelling the Accessibility Classification of Railway Lines: A case study of Northeast China railway network

A major problem addressed in railway network planning relates to distinguishing the role of the railway line in the network, and making a reasonable classification of the lines based on their role. Accessibility has been widely used to measure the role of transportation infrastructure in various studies, but few quantitative models for the classification of the role have been presented yet. In this paper, the line accessibility classification model is proposed, which aims to distinguish the role of railway lines in the network and to classify the lines into different grades. The practicability of the model is demonstrated through the case study of Northeast China railway network where the railway lines in Northeast China can be classified into three grades. The line accessibility classification model is supposed to be a strategic decision support tool for planners and policy makers to determine the classification of railway lines.

China's Railway Transportation Network Christopher Research

Based on China railway freight transportation network, this paper builds the railway transport network. Then, according to uneven distribution of capacity and the problems of asymmetric information, low efficiency of railway freight transportation, the paper puts forward the resolving method by whole network Christopher of the social network analysis. In this paper, according to the China railway transportation network statistics results of China railway freight transportation network Christopher, whole Christopher coefficient is 0.39. Originally, the study also concluded that the degrees of freight volume, using to finding out the problems of multiple nodes, sorting and take the strategy to improve group coefficient better. All in all, this paper solved the problem of China railway network understanding and gave advice for improving China's railway transportation economic benefits.

Review of China’s bioethanol development and a case study of fuel supply, demand and distribution of bioethanol expansion by national application of E10

Abstract The increasing dependence on imported oil and tremendous greenhouse gases (GHG) emission is making the diversification of primary fuel such as petroleum a critical vital energy and environmental issue in China. China is promoting bioethanol by mandatory use in nine provinces and the expansion is on agenda. This paper first reviews China’s bioethanol development. Next, suitable feedstock crops for expanded ethanol production are discussed. Particularly, bioethanol expansion by national application of E10 is investigated from perspectives of potential in bioethanol supply, projected ethanol demand, and the possible cost-effective bioethanol distribution system. It is calculated that by making use of un-used land for feedstock planting and introduction of improved feedstock varieties, potential bioethanol production capacity in China will be up to 25.33 million tons per year. Ethanol demand for national application of E10 is projected to be around 7 million tons per year. A linear optimization model is used to consider the economic costs of distributing bioethanol in China. The optimization result suggests that development of bioethanol industry may focus on Henan, Jilin, Anhui, Jiangxi and Sichuan basin. It also estimates 53.79 RMB per ton of bioethanol for downstream rail or truck transportation remain a relatively small fraction of total fuel cost. Thanks to the well developed railway network in China, more bioethanol can be distributed at a relatively modest premium distribution costs and with low environmental influences.

DEGREE AND WEIGHTED PROPERTIES OF THE DIRECTED CHINA RAILWAY NETWORK

As well known, many real complex systems are directed and weighted ones. For understanding the topology structure of the directed China Railway Network (CRN) further, we analyze the degree properties of the directed CRN and propose a new method to measure the weight of station (i.e., the utilized efficiency of station) in CRN according to how CRN works really. Rigorous analysis of the existing CRN data shows that the CRN is an assortative network with scale-free degree distribution in space L. On the other hand, the cumulative distribution of station's relative weight, the cumulative distribution of the shortest path length between stations, and the relationship between relative weight and in-(out-)degree have been studied. Our present work provides a new perspective to define the weight of transport complex network, which will be helpful for studying the dynamics of CRN.

Empirical analysis of a scale-free railway network in China

We present a detailed, empirical analysis of the statistical properties of the China Railway Network (CRN) consisting of 3915 nodes (train stations) and 22 259 edges (railways). Based on this, CRN displays two explicit features already observed in numerous real-world and artificial networks. One feature, the small-world property, has the fingerprint of a small characteristic shortest-path length, 3.5, accompanied by a high degree of clustering, 0.835. Another feature is characterized by the scale-free distributions of both degrees and weighted degrees, namely strengths. Correlations between strength and degree, degree and degree, and clustering coefficient and degree have been studied and the forms of such behaviors have been identified. In addition, we investigate distributions of clustering coefficients, topological distances, and spatial distances.

WITHDRAWN: Empirical analysis of scale-free China railway network

The Publisher regrets that this article is an accidental duplication of an article that has already been published in Physica A , 382(2007)693–703, doi: 10.1016/j.physa.2007.04.031 . The duplicate article has there fore been withdrawn.