Economic and policy analysis on high-speed rail and interactions with air transport

Abstract

This thesis focuses on High-speed rail (HSR) development and its interactions with airline. First, this thesis studies the impacts of government initiatives on the spatial transformation of transport and regional systems. We further study the Chinese HSR by reviewing its network evolution and projecting its future development. Second, we conduct a macroeconomic comparison between HSR and Low-cost carrier in Japan and Western Europe. The findings reveal that Japan and Europe have both promoted HSR as the government key project, but the European government has a more liberal attitude towards its aviation sector compared with the Japanese government. Third, we summarize all the air-rail partnerships around the globe and investigate the potential driving forces behind different partnership levels with an econometric model. We find that the location of the train station has the largest impact on the partnership level. Finally, major results and future research directions are discussed.