دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی مقایسه سیستم های شهری چین در قطار سریع السیر و شبکه های هوایی - الزویر 2018

ABSTRACT

Although the Chinese high-speed railway (HSR) entered the transportation market at a late stage in 2003, its networks have become the world's largest and are currently even growing faster than airline networks. Using the 2013 origin/destination (O/D) passenger flow data instead of commonly used scheduled data, we compare the spatial configurations of the Chinese national urban system in both high-speed railway and airline networks. The results show that HSR-dominant cities and links are located mainly in the middle and eastern parts of China, offering regional connections, whereas air-dominant cities and links are evenly distributed across the whole of China and predominantly offer interregional connections. This is mainly because HSR networks are more focused on connections to cities with high socio-economic performance and are more restricted by the geographical distance between linked cities than the airline networks. Furthermore, HSR networks promote agglomeration economies within cities located along the trunk lines in specific regions, whereas airline networks contribute to more balanced urban development in China. These dimensions indicate that the configuration of urban systems in HSR networks differ largely from that of air networks when measured in terms of passenger flows.

5. Conclusions and discussion

This paper contributes to the current research as it clearly reveals China has two different spatial structures of urban systems associated with its two high-speed transportation networks (HSR and airlines). To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first study to use actual O/D passenger flow data and compare the resulting configuration of the urban systems in these two high-speed transportation networks. These urban systems are likely to reflect the mobility of upper social occupational groups, given the social filter that shapes the use of fast, longdistance transportation modes.

The different spatial structures are well illustrated in the fact that HSR-dominant cities are centralized mainly in the middle and eastern parts of China, whereas airline-dominant cities are evenly distributed over the whole country. This difference can be partly explained by Chinese physical geography; many cities are located far away from each other in the sparsely populated mountain areas of the west region that cannot be easily reached by HSR transportation, in contrast to the cities located in the densely populated plains of the east region. The difference can be further explained by the high sensitivity of city centrality HSR networks to socio-economic performance, in contrast to a higher sensitivity to administrative level of cities and average distance to other cities in airline networks. This is largely a consequence of the relatively expensive investment needed in HSR networks, which are more economically and socially justifiable in high-density passenger volume areas. In other words, HSR networks are less suitable for long-distance travel on a national scale and less viable for low-density passenger volume corridors than airline networks, even though central governments can decide differently for political reasons (de Rus and Nombela, 2007; Dobruszkes et al., 2017). Typically, in this case, more remote but higher administrative-level cities in the low density west part of China in 2013 were usually served by airlines, which is a more cost-effective investment than HSR.