Carbon,water, land and material footprints of China’s high-speed railway construction

The rapid development of China’s high-speed rail (HSR) has caused great concern worldwide, and its various environmental impacts is also a main topic. As such, a comprehensive assessment of these environmental impacts is significant for future HSR construction. In this study, a hybrid input-output life cycle method is applied to evaluate multi-footprints of Beijing-Tianjin intercity HSR, namely, carbon, water, land, and material footprints. Results show that the total carbon, water, land, and material footprints of the entire Beijing-Tianjin HSR construction are 3669.0 kt CO₂, 54954.7 kt fresh water, 45830.6 ha land, and 8474.2 kt original materials. In the construction stage, bridge and rail systems have the largest environmental impacts, totally contributing above 74% of the four footprints. The indirect footprints from upstream material production have the dominant effects, accounting over 89% in the four footprints. Metal smelting and rolling, transportation equipment manufacturing, and non-metallic mineral products are high-water-consuming and high-emission sectors in raw material production. Improving industrial production efficiency, optimizing line layout, optimizing production distribution and construction process management are key mitigation ways for multi-footprints.     

Life cycle ownership cost and environmental externality of alternative fuel options for transit buses

This paper assesses alternative fuel options for transit buses. We consider the following options for a 40-foot and a 60-foot transit bus: a conventional bus powered by either diesel or a biodiesel blend (B20 or B100), a diesel hybrid-electric bus, a sparking-ignition bus powered by Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) or Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), and a battery electric bus (BEB) (rapid or slow charging). We estimate life cycle ownership costs (for buses and infrastructure) and environmental externalities caused by greenhouse gases (GHGs) and criteria air pollutants (CAPs) emitted from the life cycle of bus operations. We find that all alternative fuel options lead to higher life cycle ownership and external costs than conventional diesel. When external funding is available to pay for 80% of vehicle purchase expenditures (which is usually the case for U.S. transit agencies), BEBs yield large reductions (17–23%) in terms of ownership and external costs compared to diesel. Furthermore, BEBs’ advantages are robust to changes in operation and economic assumptions when external funding is available. BEBs are able to reduce CAP emissions significantly in Pittsburgh’s hotspot areas, where existing bus fleets contribute to 1% of particulate matter emissions from mobile sources. We recognize that there are still practical barriers for BEBs, e.g. range limits, land to build the charging infrastructure, and coordination with utilities. However, favorable trends such as better battery performance and economics, cleaner electricity grid, improved technology maturity, and accumulated operation experience may favor use of BEBs where feasible.     

基于公路改扩建节能减排造价管理系统的研究

随着节能减排工作的深化和细化,公路基础设施建设的节能减排越来越受到重视。基于全国公路工程造价管理系统和中国生命周期核心数据库,可以快速实现改扩建公路生命周期能耗和碳排放的规范化核算,从而筛选出节能减排效益较优的设计方案。文章通过海南省某省道改扩建项目的实证研究,为设计方案节能减排核算及效益评价提供范例,为优化公路建设行业节能减排管理提供思路。     

Airlines’ reaction to high-speed rail entries: Empirical study of the Northeast Asian market

We investigate the impact of the commencement of high-speed rail (HSR) services on airlines’ domestic available seats on affected routes in China, Japan, and South Korea. The study is based on a dataset covering the 1994–2012 period. We use the propensity score matching method to pair HSR affected routes with routes without HSR services. The difference-in-difference approach is used to estimate the impact of HSR entry. We find that HSR entries may, on average, lead to a more significant drop in airlines’ seat capacity in China than in Japan and Korea given similar HSR service speed. In China, HSR services with a maximum speed about 200 km/h can produce strong negative impacts on medium-haul air routes but induce more air seat capacity on long-haul routes. HSR services with a maximum speed of 300 km/h have little extra impact on medium-haul routes but a strong negative impact on long-haul routes. Finally, although HSR has a strong negative impact in Japan’s short-haul and medium-haul air markets, little impact is observed in its long-haul markets.     

Unequal regional impacts of high speed rail on the tourism industry: a simulation analysis of the effects of Kyushu <Emphasis Type="Italic">Shinkansen</Emphasis>

Many high speed rail (HSR) routes are under construction in various cities of the world. Although tourism is one of the industries affected by HSR, not much is known about its effects on the same. This paper studies the impact of Kyushu’s HSR (Shinkansen) on tourism using computable general equilibrium modeling in the context of regional economies and transportation. The results show that the HSR has unequal effects on tourism among prefectures. The presence of these inequalities depends on whether the prefecture is a served by HSR, whether it is a terminal or an intermediate HSR station, and its current popularity with the tourists. Despite these inequalities, the economies of all the prefectures are benefited by the HSR owing to general equilibrium effects.     

Optimizing train stopping patterns and schedules for high-speed passenger rail corridors

High-speed railway (HSR) systems have been developing rapidly in China and various other countries throughout the past decade; as a result, the question of how to efficiently operate such large-scale systems is posing a new challenge to the railway industry. A high-quality train timetable should take full advantage of the system’s capacity to meet transportation demands. This paper presents a mathematical model for optimizing a train timetable for an HSR system. We propose an innovative methodology using a column-generation-based heuristic algorithm to simultaneously account for both passenger service demands and train scheduling. First, we transform a mathematical model into a simple linear programming problem using a Lagrangian relaxation method. Second, we search for the optimal solution by updating the restricted master problem (RMP) and the sub-problems in an iterative process using the column-generation-based algorithm. Finally, we consider the Beijing–Shanghai HSR line as a real-world application of the methodology; the results show that the optimization model and algorithm can improve the defined profit function by approximately 30% and increase the line capacity by approximately 27%. This methodology has the potential to improve the service level and capacity of HSR lines with no additional high-cost capital investment (e.g., the addition of new tracks, bridges and tunnels on the mainline and/or at stations).     

High‐speed rail cost recovery time based on an integer optimization model

With increasing gasoline prices, electric high‐speed rail (HSR) systems represent one means to mitigate overexposure to volatile prices. However, additional research is needed related to funding this infrastructure. In this paper, we develop a new integer optimization model to address this problem and use a hypothetical case study to demonstrate the approach. The objective of the approach is to minimize the time period in which the cost of HSR construction and operation can be recovered. This is an iterative process based on an integer optimization model, whose objective function is to determine the optimum recovery time (ORT), by setting the HSR ticket price and frequency. Embedded in the optimization model is a multinomial logit model for calculating the demand for HSR as a function of these decision variables, thus capturing the effects of level of service on market share. In particular, the optimization model accounts for the role of different types of subsidies toward HSR construction (one‐time subsidies at construction, annual subsidies, and subsidies depending on frequency). This method can also help determine whether an HSR system should be built or how much subsidy should be provided given a fixed expected cost recovery time. By integrating the logit model into the objective function evaluation, the effects of ticket price and service frequency on service demand can be directly captured. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A three-phase QFD-based framework for identifying key passenger needs to improve satisfaction with the seat of high-speed rail in China

This study aims to suggest a three-phased methodological framework based on the operational approach of quality function deployment (QFD) to improve the service quality and passenger satisfaction with China’s high-speed rail (HSR) by identifying the key passenger needs with regard the HSR seats. For the first phase, the collection of the voice of the customers/passengers (VOC), the processing of the collected VOC into need items and further into passenger needs of QFD would be explained in terms of knowledge management. For the second phase, a reference comparison-based fuzzy best–worst method is developed for determining the relative importance of passenger needs, with a particular purpose of coping with the uncertainty and ambiguity associated with qualitative assessment of respondents. For the third phase, the importance-performance analysis is performed to determine the improvement priorities for meeting passenger needs. Findings showed that Body-friendly seat structure and Reasonable layout of the seat are the two most important needs demanded by the passengers of second-class cabins, with the former being the top priority. The current study provides useful references for service operators of HSR to formulate development strategies for improving the seat comfortability, which subsequently contributes to improving HSR’s service quality and passenger satisfaction. Moreover, the proposed methodological framework for identifying the important passenger needs can be appropriately adjusted and expanded to similar transportation infrastructures and facilities.

     

Air transport and high-speed rail competition: Environmental implications and mitigation strategies

We build a duopoly model to shed light on the environmental impact of HSR-air transport competition, capturing the effects of induced demand, schedule frequency and HSR speed. The net environmental effect can be negative since there is a the trade-off between the substitution effect – how many passengers using the HSR are shifted from air transport – and the traffic generation effect – how much new demand is generated by the HSR. We conduct a simulation study based on the London-Paris market where HSR has served 70% of the market. The introduction of HSR is detrimental to LAP, while it is beneficial to GHG emissions. HSR entry increases neither LAP nor GHG emissions when the ratio between HSR and air transport emissions is relatively low. Moreover, competition is more likely to be detrimental to the environment when the weight of the social welfare in HSR objective function is high. Since the magnitude of the environmental friendliness of HSR compared to air transport hinges on the mix of energy sources used to generate the electricity (which is heavily constrained by the country in which HSR operates), regulators should assess the implications of HSR entry taking into account the energy policy and mitigation strategies available to transport modes.     

An optimization model of energy and transportation systems: Assessing the high-speed rail impacts in the United States

This paper presents a long-term investment planning model that co-optimizes infrastructure investments and operations across transportation and electric infrastructure systems for meeting the energy and transportation needs in the United States. The developed passenger transportation model is integrated within the modeling framework of a National Long-term Energy and Transportation Planning (NETPLAN) software, and the model is applied to investigate the impact of high-speed rail (HSR) investments on interstate passenger transportation portfolio, fuel and electricity consumption, and 40-year cost and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. The results show that there are feasible scenarios under which significant HSR penetration can be achieved, leading to reasonable decrease in national long-term CO₂ emissions and costs. At higher HSR penetration of approximately 30% relative to no HSR in the portfolio promises a 40-year cost savings of up to $0.63 T, gasoline and jet fuel consumption reduction of up to 34% for interstate passenger trips, CO₂ emissions reduction by about 0.8 billion short tons, and increased resilience against petroleum price shocks. Additionally, sensitivity studies with respect to light-duty vehicle mode share reveal that in order to realize such long-term cost and emission benefits, a change in the passenger mode choice is essential to ensure higher ridership for HSR.     

A Review of Ex-Post Evidence for Mode Substitution and Induced Demand Following the Introduction of High-Speed Rail

ABSTRACT

To date, relatively little is known about the nature of the demand for high-speed rail (HSR) soon after inauguration of the services, despite close to 50-year experience of HSR operation and 17 166?km of HSR network around the world. This is a real lacuna given the scale of HSR construction around the world, the amount of resources committed to it, the desired accessibility, economic and environmental effects associated with HSR development and the relatively poor track record of forecasting demand for HSR services. Focusing on mode substitution and induced demand effects, this review aims to fill the gap in knowledge about the ex-post demand for HSR services in order to facilitate a learning process for the planning of the future HSR network. Although there is not much evidence on the demand for HSR services and existing evidence is largely influenced by route-specific characteristics, a methodological limitation that must be acknowledged, the evidence presented allows a better characterisation of HSR as a mode of transport. The review shows that the demand for HSR a few years after inauguration is about 10–20% induced demand and the rest is attributed to mode substitution. In terms of mode substitution, in most cases the majority of HSR passengers have used the conventional rail before. Substitution from aircraft, car and coach is generally more modest.     

Grand challenges for high-speed rail environmental assessment in the United States

The comprehensiveness of environmental assessments of future long-distance travel that include high-speed rail (HSR) are constrained by several methodological, institutional, and knowledge gaps that must and can be addressed. These gaps preclude a robust understanding of the changes in environmental, human health, resource, and climate change impacts that result from the implementation of HSR in the United States. The gaps are also inimical to an understanding of how HSR can be positioned for 21st century sustainability goals. Through a synthesis of environmental studies, the gaps are grouped into five overarching grand challenges. They include a spatial incompatibility between HSR and other long-distance modes that is often ignored, an environmental review process that obviates modal alternatives, siloed interest in particular environmental impacts, a dearth of data on future vehicle and energy sources, and a poor understanding of secondary impacts, particularly in land use. Recommendations are developed for institutional investment in multimodal research, knowledge and method building around several topics. Ultimately, the environmental assessment of HSR should be integrated in assessments that seek to understand the complementary and competitive configurations of transportation services, as well as future accessibility.     

Life cycle assessment of large scale timber bridges: A case study from the world’s longest timber bridge design in Norway

This paper seeks to use life cycle assessment to investigate the comparative environmental impacts of two proposed bridge designs for the new Mjøsa Bridge over Lake Mjøsa in Norway. The Norwegian Public Roads Administration has designed one timber and one concrete alternative for the 1650 m 4-lane highway bridge. If the timber bridge design is chosen, it will be the longest timber bridge in the world once constructed.The main motivation for building the timber bridge is to utilize local industry and to reduce environmental impacts in road infrastructure. This study aims to determine the expected emissions from both construction designs by using life cycle assessment. Life cycle assessment studies on smaller timber bridges have been carried out in the past with favorable results towards timber designs, but no bridge of this scale has been built and therefore a more comprehensive study is required to confirm if a timber bridge of this size is a sustainable choice for transport infrastructure.The results of the study show that the timber bridge has significantly lower emissions than the concrete bridge across all impact categories included in the scope of this study. Additional environmental gains can be made from end-of-life treatment of materials. This study shows that large scale timber bridge designs should be considered for future road projects.     

东京涩谷站TOD开发模式及其借鉴意义

中国的城市建设已经由原有的扩张阶段,转入了对存量的提质增效阶段。相应地,我国各大城市的轨道交通也进入了新的发展时期,以TOD为核心理念的公共交通开发模式开始受到政府和专家学者的重视。本文以东京涩谷站中心及周边地区基础设施更新建设为重点案例,分析涩谷站更新建设过程中的制度保障、战略目标和开发内容,总结其开发的特色和优势,并结合我国实际,探讨轨道交通站点的开发策略,以期为未来中国城市轨道交通站点的开发提供借鉴。     

Low cost carrier competition and route entry in an emerging but regulated aviation market – The case of China

Although China lags behind other liberalized aviation markets in low cost carrier (LCC) development, its largest LCC, Spring Airlines, has achieved rapid growth in traffic volume and revenue, as well as consistent profitability, since its inauguration in 2005. Our empirical study on the Chinese domestic market suggests that Spring adopts a “cream skimming” strategy to enter high-priced routes, allowing the carrier to achieve both a very high load factor and considerable profitability. Spring’s capacity and market share on individual routes are constrained to low levels, likely due to government regulation and/or a “puppy dog” strategy adopted by the carrier. As a result, Spring is able to achieve fast growth without triggering price wars. To incumbent full service carriers, high speed rail (HSR) services impose much more significant competitive pressure than low cost carriers. Similar to LCCs in developed markets, Spring prefers to serve markets with high traffic volumes out of its operational base in Shanghai. Overall, Spring’s entry decision is not significantly affected by competition, either from full service airlines or HSR services. Our investigation suggests that LCCs have potential to introduce more competition but are yet to be a “game changer” in China. Further deregulation of the domestic market is needed.     

High speed rail and tourism: Empirical evidence from Spain

This paper evaluates how changes in the provision of high-speed rail (HSR) services affect tourism outcomes in Spain, a tourist country with the newest and longest HSR network in Europe. To do so it employs an empirical strategy based on the differences-in-differences panel data method with double fixed effects. Data are provided by Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE) and cover 50 provinces over a 15-year time span (1998–2013). Our results provide mixed evidence about the impact of HSR accessibility on tourist outcomes. On the one hand, we find that air traffic is negatively affected by HSR and air traffic is a strong predictor of tourist arrivals. This suggests a negative indirect effect of HSR on tourist outcomes. On the other hand, HSR may have a positive (weak) direct effect on tourism. However, such result is conditioned on the measure of HSR accessibility and econometric technique used. Thus, the net effect of HSR on tourism outcomes is not consistently positive. This pattern might be attributed to a network design that does not respond to ridership needs and which has a substitution effect on air transportation, the main mode for long-distance tourist mobility.     

Short-term forecasting of high-speed rail demand: A hybrid approach combining ensemble empirical mode decomposition and gray support vector machine with real-world applications in China

Short-term forecasting of high-speed rail (HSR) passenger flow provides daily ridership estimates that account for day-to-day demand variations in the near future (e.g., next week, next month). It is one of the most critical tasks in high-speed passenger rail planning, operational decision-making and dynamic operation adjustment. An accurate short-term HSR demand prediction provides a basis for effective rail revenue management. In this paper, a hybrid short-term demand forecasting approach is developed by combining the ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) and grey support vector machine (GSVM) models. There are three steps in this hybrid forecasting approach: (i) decompose short-term passenger flow data with noises into a number of intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) and a trend term; (ii) predict each IMF using GSVM calibrated by the particle swarm optimization (PSO); (iii) reconstruct the refined IMF components to produce the final predicted daily HSR passenger flow, where the PSO is also applied to achieve the optimal refactoring combination. This innovative hybrid approach is demonstrated with three typical origin–destination pairs along the Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR in China. Mean absolute percentage errors of the EEMD-GSVM predictions using testing sets are 6.7%, 5.1% and 6.5%, respectively, which are much lower than those of two existing forecasting approaches (support vector machine and autoregressive integrated moving average). Application results indicate that the proposed hybrid forecasting approach performs well in terms of prediction accuracy and is especially suitable for short-term HSR passenger flow forecasting.     

Does a circular high-speed rail network promote efficiency and spatial equity in transport accessibility? Evidence from Hainan Island,China

This paper investigates the efficiency and spatial equity impacts of a unique island-looping high-speed rail (HSR) network in Hainan province, China. An integrated network and raster-based model is applied to accurately measure the accessibility indicators. We perform analysis at four different geographical planning levels – island, corridor, spillover, and county level. The HSR with a non-polarized topology can increase the accessibility of the entire island and corridor, but only leads to a slight increase in the spillover areas without HSR stations. HSR construction also leads to spatial cohesion for the entire island and corridor. Although the circular HSR network consists of several HSR stations distributed relatively equally, the results show that counties contribute differently to the cohesion of the entire island due to the varied initial level of accessibility values. Moreover, the county-level analysis reveals that the internal changes of each county are also different with balancing, polarization, and neutral effects appearing. Therefore, the internal equity of counties needs to be combined with their external contributions to global equity. Our framework permits policymakers to make customized HSR transport policies at different planning levels, particularly for an isolated area.     

Time-based life-cycle assessment for environmental policymaking: Greenhouse gas reduction goals and public transit

As decision-makers increasingly embrace life-cycle assessment (LCA) and target transportation services for regional environmental goals, it becomes imperative that outcomes from changes to transportation infrastructure systems are accurately estimated. Greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction policies have created interest in better understanding how public transit systems reduce emissions. Yet the use of average emission factors (e.g., grams CO₂e per distance traveled) persists as the state-of-the-art masking the variations in emissions across time, and confounding the ability to accurately estimate the environmental effects from changes to transit infrastructure and travel behavior. An LCA is developed of the Expo light rail line and a competing car trip (in Los Angeles, California) that includes vehicle, infrastructure, and energy production processes, in addition to propulsion. When results are normalized per passenger kilometer traveled (PKT), life-cycle processes increase energy use and GHG emissions up to 83%, and up to 690% for smog and respiratory impact potentials. However, the use of a time-independent PKT normalization obfuscates a decision-maker’s ability to understand whether the deployment of a transit system reduces emissions below a future year policy target (e.g., 80% of 1990 emissions by 2050). The year-by-year marginal effects of the decision to deploy the Expo line are developed including reductions in automobile travel. The time-based marginal results provide clearer explanations for how environmental effects in a region change and the critical life-cycle processes that should be targeted to achieve policy targets. It shows when environmental impacts payback and how much reduction is achieved by a policy-specified future year.     

The future relations between air and rail transport in an island country

This paper proposes a bi-level passenger transport market model taking into account competition between air and high-speed rail (HSR) in a domestic market. The paper discusses the characteristics of the relationship between market share and connectivity in domestic and international markets. The result suggests that because of the dominance of HSR in the domestic market, when connectivity between air and HSR is good, international passenger’s welfare can be improved. Finally, when considering profitability of the players, there is an incentive for airlines to cooperate with HSR, but there is no incentive for HSR to cooperate with airlines.