The longer the better? Revisiting high-speed rail coverage worldwide

ABSTRACT

While high-speed rail networks involve significant public expenditure in the name of the whole nation, scholars have paid little attention to the share of the population served by this modern transport mode. Studies have favoured perspectives that either neglect population volumes or include them but cannot offer a worldwide assessment. Public authorities favour passionate statements about network length and cruising speed but at the same time they neglect the populations served. In contrast, this paper offers a worldwide comparison of populations served by high-speed rail services in 15 countries. We found the range is wide (7%−94%) and depends on several factors beyond network length, including network design, urbanisation patterns, technical characteristics and domestic vs. international purposes.

KEYWORDS:

• Transport network design
• high-speed rail networks
• rail geography
• spatial coverage

Acknowledgements

This research was conducted thanks to a funding for a research stay of Amparo Moyano at Brussels Free University (ULB) from the University of Castilla-La Mancha, ‘Plan Propio de Investigación 2021’, co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund. In addition, the authors are grateful for the relevant comments and suggestions received during the special session on ‘High Speed Rail Development: Geographical Impacts’ convened by Andrew Goetz (University of Denver) and Chia-Lin Chen (University of Liverpool) within the IGU Centennial Congress (Paris, July 2022). They also warmly thank Jiaoe Wang and Peter Endemann for their support with the Chinese and German HSR networks, respectively.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Translated by the authors. Retrieved from https://www.vie-publique.fr/discours/185009-discours-de-m-jacques-chirac-president-de-la-republique-sur-le-tgv-s (accessed 4 August 2022).

2 Note, lines are not needed for the spatial analysis but were extracted for mapping purposes.

3 https://www.geofabrik.de/

4 In the Spanish case, only ALVIA services allow these extensions on traditional lines, as they have the ability to change the gauge, from Iberian to International gauge, while running, and vice versa.

5 https://ghsl.jrc.ec.europa.eu

6 Thanks to the 1.435-m standard gauge.

7 With the notable exception of the MAGLEV line under construction between Tokyo and Nagoya as a second high-speed link within the Japanese megalopolis.

8 At best France’s rail industry helped to develop the initial phase of the Spanish and Korean HSR systems in the twentieth century.

9 We have not considered British domestic HSR services operated on HS1 because their cruise speed is lower than 250 km/h.

10 At the time of writing, the number of HSR services at the station level in Taiwan ranged between 137 and 497 per week (one direction).

11 Catchment areas based on travel time by public transport could not be calculated because networks and timetables were not extensively available in a single and homogenised form.