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.     

传统铁道工程实训向“高铁”转型的研究与实践

文章分析了传统铁道工程实训条件的局限性,并针对高铁轨道构造及其施工与维修过程特点,提出了高职院校传统的铁道工程实训教学基地应将高铁轨道构造、施工新技术、维修新设备等引入实训建设中,围绕高铁轨道精调、无缝线路焊接及探伤、大型机械养路等方面实施"高铁"转型改造方案,构建基于当前高速铁路的铁道工程实训教学基地。     

站城融合理念下高铁客运枢纽区域步行交通布置研究

本文对高铁客运枢纽区域内步行交通的影响范围和功能定位进行分析,提出在站城融合理念下,步行交通是高铁客运枢纽最重要的交通方式。利用开源数据,对比我国京沪高铁沿线与日本东海道新干线,以及北京南站、上海虹桥站、东京站、名古屋站,分析枢纽步行交通的影响因素,并提出站城融合背景下枢纽步行交通系统的规划建设重点和指标体系,为高铁客运枢纽实现站城融合、建立完善的步行交通系统提供参考。     

Can high speed rail offset its embedded emissions?

This paper analyzes the climate implications of investments in high speed railway lines given uncertainty in future transport demand, technology and power production. To capture the uncertainty of estimated parameters, distributions for the annual traffic emissions reduction required to compensate for the embedded emissions from the construction of infrastructure are calculated using Monte Carlo simulation. In order to balance the annualized emissions from the railway construction, traffic volumes of more than 10 million annual one-way trips are usually required. Most of the traffic diverted from other modes must come from aviation and the project cannot involve the extensive use of tunnels.     

Analyzing high speed rail passengers’ train choices based on new online booking data in China

This study explores two nonparametric machine learning methods, namely support vector regression (SVR) and artificial neural networks (ANN), for understanding and predicting high-speed rail (HSR) travelers’ choices of ticket purchase timings, train types, and travel classes, using ticket sales data. In the train choice literature, discrete choice analysis is the predominant approach and many variants of logit models have been developed. Alternatively, emerging travel choice studies adopt non-utility-based methods, especially nonparametric machine learning methods including SVR and ANN, because (1) those methods do not rely on assumptions on the relations between choices and explanatory variables or any prior knowledge of the underlying relations; (2) they have superb capabilities of iteratively identifying patterns and extracting rules from data. This paper thus contributes to the HSR train choice literature by applying and comparing SVR and ANN with a real-world case study of the Shanghai-Beijing HSR market in China. A new normalized metric capturing both the load factor and the booking lead time is proposed as the target variable and several train service attributes, such as day of week, departure time, travel time, fare, are identified as input variables. Computational results demonstrate that both SVR and ANN can predict the train choice behavior with high accuracy, outperforming the linear regression approach. Potential applications of this study, such as rail pricing reform, have also been identified.     

Does European high-speed rail affect the current level of air services? An EU-wide analysis

This paper analyses whether the current provision of air services in Europe is impacted by high-speed rail (HSR). An ex-post analysis is carried out considering 161 routes EU-wide using transnational data. We use censored regressions with special attention paid to the presence of outliers in the sample and to the potential problem of non-normality of error terms. It is found that shorter HSR travel times involve less air services, with similar impact on both airline seats and flights. This impact quickly drops between 2.0- and 2.5-h HSR travel time. The impact of HSR frequencies is much more limited. Hubbing strategies led by the airlines have the opposite effect from HSR, as hubs involve more air services. Airline/HSR integration at the airport and cities being served by both central and peripheral stations have no significant impact. Metropolitan and national spatial patterns may help to better understand intermodal effects.     

高铁时代下广西道路客运企业面临的机遇与挑战探析

文章从高铁时代下高铁运输对传统道路运输的冲击入手,结合区域经济发展情况,分析道路运输企业所面临的挑战和发展机遇,探讨了高铁与道路客运的优劣性,提出道路客运企业应对挑战、走出困境、持续发展的对策。     

Long-term impact of the Shinkansen on rail and air demand: analysis with data from Northeast Japan

This paper analyses how the high-speed rail construction in Northeast Japan (Tohoku) has affected total demand and interregional travel patterns. We use annual interregional passenger data from 1989 to 2012 and apply regression analysis with the demand between Tokyo and the Tohoku prefectures as the dependent variable. We distinguish particularly between the ‘Full-’ and the ‘Mini-’ Shinkansen, where the latter are branch services running with reduced speed. We find that the ‘Full-Shinkansen’ quickly increases rail and total public transport trips and generates additional rail demand year on year. The ‘Mini-Shinkansen’ impacts are less pronounced. Furthermore, our analysis shows that the Shinkansen has shifted some demand from air to rail once it started operation and increased rail share gradually. We therefore suggest that predictions of demand impacts should carefully distinguish immediate from gradual impacts. We also discuss differences in regional demand in that not all prefectures have gained equally from Shinkansen construction.     

The potential mitigation of CO2 emissions via modal substitution of high-speed rail for short-haul air travel from a life cycle perspective – An Australian case study

The objective of this study is to provide a strategic evaluation of the mitigation of CO₂ emissions via modal substitution of high-speed rail for short-haul air travel on the Sydney–Melbourne, Australia city-pair from a life cycle perspective. It has been demonstrated that when considering CO₂ emissions from vehicle operations, the modal shift from air to high-speed rail on this city-pair has the potential to provide a means of CO₂ mitigation. However, uncertainty exists with regard to the level of mitigation potential when considering the whole-of-life performance of the systems. Given the significant difference in the infrastructure requirements between the air mode and the high-speed rail mode, this study quantifies the life cycle CO₂ load attributable to each system and examines the effect on CO₂ mitigation potential. The study concluded that while the inclusion of the linehaul infrastructure did increase the CO₂ load associated with high-speed rail mode, it did not equate to or exceed the CO₂ load per trip as experienced by the air mode. The avoided annual life cycle CO₂ emission in the target year 2056 was 0.37 Mt representing an 18% reduction when compared to the air mode only on the city pair. In fact, the scenario comparison indicated that the substitution of high-speed rail for short-haul air travel on the city pair resulted in CO₂ emissions avoidance throughout the longitudinal period.     

Airline network choice and market coverage under high-speed rail competition

While the existing literature has focused on the short-term impacts, this paper investigates the long-term impacts of high-speed rail (HSR) competition on airlines. An analytical model is developed to study how an airline may change its network and market coverage when facing HSR competition on trunk routes. We show that prior to HSR competition, an airline is more likely to adopt a fully-connected network and cover fewer fringe markets if the trunk market is large. Under HSR competition, the airline will, for a given network structure, have a greater incentive to cover more fringe (regional or foreign) markets if the trunk market is large, or the airline network is close to hub-and-spoke. Further, the airline will, for any given market coverage, move towards a hub-and-spoke network when the trunk market is large, or the number of fringe markets covered by the airline network is large. Both effects are more prominent when the decreasing rate of airline density economies is large. We further show that HSR competition can induce the airline to adopt network structure and market coverage that are closer to the socially optimal ones, thereby suggesting a new source of welfare gain from HSR based on its long-term impacts on airlines. Implications for operators, policy makers and specific countries (such as China) are also discussed.     

Methodological challenges in modelling the choice of mode for a new travel alternative using binary stated choice data – The case of high speed rail in Norway

Binary stated choices between traveller’s current travel mode and a not-yet-existing mode might be used to build a forecasting model with all (current and future) travel alternatives. One challenge with this approach is the identification of the most appropriate inter-alternative error structure of the forecasting model.By critically assessing the practise of translating estimated group scale parameters into nest parameters, we illustrate the inherent limitations of such binary choice data. To overcome some of the problems, we use information from both stated and revealed choice data and propose a model with a cross-nested logit specification, which is estimated on the pooled data set.     

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.