Study Of The Accessibility Influence On Cities Along Wuhan-guangzhou High-speed Railway

In recent years, High-Speed Railway(HSR) develops rapidly in China and the comprehensive HSR network has been formed basically. The travel time among cities along HSR lines has been greatly shortened with their operation, which brings dramatic traveling convenience and impacts on the corresponding cities’ development profoundly. Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR is taken as an example in this paper and 16 cities along it are selected to compare and analyze their accessibility changes before and after the line’s opening, all of which are based on the statistics data of 2008 and 2014. Furthermore, the passenger sharing ratio of the Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR, Beijing-Guangzhou railway, highway and air traffic is confirmed.The weighted average travel time model, the economic potential model, the spatial interaction model and the daily accessibility model are established to evaluate the cities’ accessibility along Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR in this paper. The principal component analysis is gotten by SPSS software to acquire the city’s economic scale and these cities’ accessibility is worked out combined with the average travel time of high grade trains connecting the cities. The results show that, after the operating of Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR, each city’s improvement rate of the weighted average travel time universally reaches about 60%, the economic potential of cities which are in the same level presents the distance decay phenomenon to the economic center, the spatial interaction between cities which are in a dense urban area significantly enhances, the cities that the daily accessibility is strong concentrate in Hunan Province and there are six cities which can respectively arrive at the other 15 cities along the HSR in 3 hours communication circle. According to the four accessibility models’ evaluation results, it is found that the improvement rates of the counties’ accessibility are universally higher. In terms of overall cities, Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR improves their accessibility in varying degree, the relative difference of cities’ accessibility is reduced, and the accessibility equilibrium is enhanced as well. The space-time distance among cities is decreased substantially with the opening of the Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR. The attraction and radiation capability of “Wuhan Metropolitan Area”, “Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan City Group” and “Pearl River Delta Economic Zone” these three major economic centers are intensified. Meanwhile, the communication and connection of cities are strengthened and the economic belt of the Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR is founded. Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR also creates a positive impact on the economic and social development of the cities along the rail. The convenient traffic conditions can attract a larger number of merchants to invest, optimize industrial layout, accelerate the integration process of the cities along the railway, and promote the construction of urban comprehensive transportation junction, which benefit to the cities’ environmental protection as well.In addition, the passenger sharing ratio of Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR is studied. The comprehensive utility function of each transportation mode is determined taking safety, economy, rapidity, convenience, comfort and punctuality as six major indicators. By using the improved Logit model, the final passenger sharing ratio of each transportation mode before and after the Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR’s opening is calculated. The research results show that, for the cities such as Wuhan, Changsha and Guangzhou which are connected by flight with each other, the operating of Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR causes a great shock on air traffic and shares about 30% air traffic passengers. However, for the cities without flight connecting, the Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR occupies the absolute advantage and the share ratios of the passengers are generally more than 50%.In summary, the operating of Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR not only improves dramatically the cities’ accessibility along the line, but also changes gradually the choices of people’s travel mode, and adds new vitality for the online cities’ development.