The High-Speed Railway Network in Yangtze River Delta: An Analysis of the Accessibility Impact

Historically, changes in transport infrastructures have produced a progressive contraction of space, in the sense that travel times have been shortened and transport costs have been reduced. Improvement of transportation networks reduces interaction costs, increases the overall competitiveness of the system and allows for more specialization such that economies of scale and specialization benefits can be utilized. Hence, we should expect that production and other economic activities can be carried out more efficiently as the quality and capacity of a region's transportation networks increase (Forslund and Johansson, 1995). High-speed railway is the most visible form of new technology accompanying and enhancing the transformation to an information-based economy, and it is likely to have the greatest spatial development effects among any other technologies (Brian D. Sands, 1993). The development of High-Speed Railway has been one of the central features of recent China’s transport infrastructure policy. From the initial Beijing-Tianjin inter-city railway to the recent Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, the High-Speed Railway Age of China is coming. Based on the mid-long term railway network plan (2008), the High-Speed Railway mileage of China is expected to be more than 18 thousand kilometers in 2020, which will constitute more than half of the world’s High-Speed Railway mileage, formatting a network structure of ‘4 length lines and 4 breadth lines’. Since the Reform and Open Policy Age, the Yangtze River Delta area has grown into an area with the highest level of economic development and overall economic strength in China and it is also the area enjoying the most intensive High-speed Railway networks. This paper evaluates the accessibility impact of the future High-Speed Railway in Yangtze River Delta, by reducing time distance between places and modifying their relative location. We compare the current situation with that foreseen for the year 2020, according to the Outline Plan of the China’s High-Speed Railway Network, in order to analyze whether the cities will benefit from construction and improvement of the infrastructure and how spatial pattern changes of Yangtze River Delta’s accessibility under the impact of High-Speed Railway. It concludes that the High-Speed Railway will certainly enhance accessibility within Yangtze River Delta area, greatly shorten temporal and spatial distance between cities and promote the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta. The traditional pattern of regional governance will face a new challenge. On the other hand, the High-Speed Railway will also increase imbalances between the other main cities and their hinterlands because it differently affects the accessibilities of different areas. There is evidence of increasing concentration into the main metropolitan centers served by the emerging network. So, different cities should seek their own development strategies according to their different characteristics under the High-Speed Railway Age. Accessibility denotes the ease with which activities may be reached from a given location using a particular transportation system. A weighted average travel time indicator is applied for regional accessibility calculation. This measure identifies the spatial distribution of accessibility in the area of study, emphasizing the high-speed railway effects, and locates accessibility changes at the regional level. A geographic information system (GIS) was used to carry out this study.