Effects From Expanding High-Speed Railway Network on Regional Accessibility and Economic Productivity in China

This paper reviews the historical evolution of China’s high-speed railway (HSR) network, evaluates improvements in accessibility, and analyzes the associations of improved accessibility with regional economic productivity, given regional heterogeneity. Three accessibility indicators were considered: average travel time to all prefectural level regions (ATT), average travel time to important cities (ATI), and daily accessible prefectural level regions. These indicators were used to quantify the development of the HSR network during two periods, from 2007 to 2012 and 2012 to 2018. First, the results revealed that, in the first period, the accessibility indicators of the east region improved the most, whereas in the second period, the west significantly improved. We subsequently analyzed the economic productivity and -equilibrium of the urban agglomerations affected by introducing the HSR. Those results suggested that the Triangle of Central China, Chengdu-Chongqing, and Central Guizhou urban agglomerations performed well as the HSR developed. The linkages between regional economic productivity and accessibility improvement were then measured using a multivariable regression with panel data. The results showed that the reduction of ATT and ATI significantly positively contributed to economic productivity at different geographical scales in China. Furthermore, ATT had a larger effect in the northeast and central regions, whereas ATI had a larger effect on the northeast and west regions.