Highlights Three indices and Three Scenarios are used to explore the accessibility impact. Nodal accessibility is improved but the inequality is enlarged as well. Cities within 50km of HSR stations and very large cities have the greatest increase. Smaller cities close to very large cities and HSR lines enjoy substantial increase.
Abstract Although the construction of China’s high-speed rail (HSR) network only started in 2003, the network is already the largest in the world. This paper analyses the impact of the evolving HSR network on the accessibility by HSR and conventional ground transport of 333 prefecture-level cities and 4 municipalities. This paper employs three indicators of accessibility, and analyses three Scenarios. It shows that the HSR network will bring about substantial improvement in accessibility, and lead to national time–space convergence, but will also increase the inequality of nodal accessibility between eastern, central, and western regions, between cities with different sizes of population (excluding the case of the daily accessibility indicator) and between cities that differ in the shortest distance to HSR stations. The HSR network enlarges internal disparities in each of the regions and the five types of cities. The internal inequality of nodal accessibility in all three Scenarios generally increases from the eastern region via the central region to the western region, as well as from very large cities to small cities, varying inversely with the level of economic development and population size. Spatially, accessibility increases generally conform to the distance decay rule but with minor fluctuations. The 50 cities with the largest increases in accessibility are mostly located 50km or less away from HSR stations and have populations of over 3million, with the smaller ones located along HSR lines or around large cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. As time progresses, the planned HSR network will result in more balanced development, but regional disparities in accessibility will still be greater than before the construction of the HSR.
Impacts on accessibility of China’s present and future HSR network
Journal of Transport Geography ; 40 ; 123-132
2014-01-01
10 pages
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
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