Competition Between Railways and Other Transport Modes
Chapter 5 is the city-level analysis focusing on the issue of competition between railways and other transport modes in China, in particular between railways and air transport. It firstly adopts a time series approach and analyzes the interrelationship be
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Competition Between Railways and Other Transport Modes
5.1 Introduction Compared with road and air transport, railways are sustainable transport modes since they can handle large volumes of passengers with less pollution (Givoni et al. 2009; Loo and Cheng 2010). Also, they have the advantages in promoting economic development and social equity (Litman 1997; Monzón et al. 2013). However, the reality is that since the middle of the 20th century railways have been replaced by highways and aviation around the world. This phenomenon is in accordance with Owen’s stage of mobility theory (1987). According to the theory, the evolution of transport modes is interlinked with human’s activities scale. In the early stage of mobility, when activities are confined in regional dimension, railways undertake most traffic volume; however, when the activities scale is widened to the national and international dimensions, alternative modes like motor cars and airplanes become more important than railways. Thus, the shift of passengers from railways to road and air transport is promoted by the increase of mobility demand following economic development (Ausubel et al. 1998; Schafer et al. 2009). In that case, regions in different mobility stages may show different dependence on railways. For instance, railways in China are much more intensively utilized than in USA, and the USA has a greater dependence on automobiles and domestic air flights (Loo and Liu 2005). Nevertheless, following the mobility evolution, future passenger transport is likely to be dominated by road and air transport, which rely more on fossil fuel and contribute more to climate change. Therefore, the development of transport is in a dilemma of high mobility and low sustainability. Fortunately, improvement of railways, especially the introduction of high-speed rail (HSR) since the 1960s, may provide a way to solve the dilemma, because modern railways not only keep the environmental advantages of conventional railways, but also have the ability to increase capacity, reduce travel time and provide high level of service. The 21st century may become a period of renaissance for railways. On
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 L. Li, Railways and Sustainable Low-Carbon Mobility in China, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9081-8_5
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5 Competition Between Railways and Other Transport Modes
one hand, modern railways, such as HSR and urban rapid rail transit systems, have developed in many countries since the 1960s, such as Japan, France, Germany, Spain, UK, Italy and China (Eastham 1998). On the other hand, modal shift is happening from road and air transport to passenger railways. Based on the four-step model (i.e., trip generation, trip distribution, modal split and traffic assignment) of transport planning (Dickey 1983), railway improvement could change the modal share by increasing its utility and changing passengers’ travel choice. Many experiences show that HSR can attract pas
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