Railway Transport Development And Evolution Of The Pattern Of Urbanization In China

Urbanization is an important process of social development taking place in our country.Improvement of transport infrastructure by reducing transportation costs that leads to changes inurban location and promote urban economic agglomeration will affect urban population growth,and this will lead to changes in urbanization pattern.“Medium and long-term railway planning(2008)”pointed out that in2020, the national high-speed railway will reach12,000km above,and “four vertical and four horizontal” rail passenger corridor and three fast intercity rapidpassenger transport system as the main high-speed rail network will be constructed. And this willhave a broad and profound impact on the process of urbanization in China.Firstly, we study the empirical relationship between the six speed rise of railway and urbanpopulation growth. By using the urban population change model including changes in urbanaccessibility, we study the relationship between urban accessibility improvements and theirpopulation growth from different lines, regions and urban scales in the year of1997-2011. Theresults indicate that: Overall, every1percent increase of the accessibility caused by railway’sspeed rise will cause an increase of0.67percent of the urban population. For different lines, thesix speed rise of railway has a more significant positive role in population growth of the citiesalong the railways whose speed had been raised; every1percent increase of the accessibilitycaused by railway’s speed rise will cause an increase of1.38percent of the urban population. Butfor the cities along the railways whose speed had not been raised, the impact on urban populationgrowth is statistically not significant. For different regions, the impact of six speed rise ofrailway has obvious regional differences on urban population growth along the speed rise railway.In the east, every1percent increase of the accessibility caused by railway’s speed rise will causean increase of2.11percent of the urban population, while other regions don’t pass the test ofsignificance.Secondly, we utilize “Medium and long-term railway planning (2008)” to calculate thevalue of urban accessibility after the full opening of the high-speed railway in2020fromdifferent lines, regions, urban scales and urban agglomerations. Then，we utilize the accessibilitychanges and urban population growth equation that we have gotten to predict the urbanpopulation growth and distribution changes. The results indicate that：overall，the increase onaccessibility will increase45.8%of urban population growth rate. From different lines, regions,urban scales and urban agglomerations, urbanization will show the following characteristics：(1)Urban population will gather along the high-speed railways.(2)Urban level-scale structurewill appear “olive” distribution.(3)Urban population growth in different regions will show a pattern of Eastern region> Central Region> Northeast Region>West Region.(4)The trend ofurban agglomeration as t he main population gathering area will be further enhanced. Thus it canbe seen that the construction and operation of high-speed railway will be an important factor thatresult in the change of pattern of urbanization in our country. Our government should takeappropriate measures for the high-speed railway construction plan which can make use of thebeneficial effects and prevent its possible adverse effects on urbanization pattern changesproduced by the high-speed railways. From the need to the optimization of the pattern ofurbanization, our government may also consider to make the necessary adjustments to thehigh-speed railway network construction plan, which can make high-speed railway play a betterpositive role on urbanization pattern changes for the future.