The Construction Of High-speed Railway And The Development Of Economic Belt

The transport facilities enhance the frequency and scale of economic contacts between cities and areas through improving transportation accessibility of the cities nearby. This is helpful to strengthen the factor mobility and economic trade cooperation between regions, and advance the process of regional economic integration, consequently promote the formation and development of economic belt. High-speed railway is a new transportation mode with significant advantages, such as fast speed, large volume and high frequency. It has greatly reduced the spatial distance and transportation costs, making economic activities agglomerate along high-speed rails, which will absolutely put important effects on the process of regional integration and the economic belt development along the routes.First of all, we study the way that transportation facilities make influence on economic belt. After summing up the existing literatures, we find the basic mechanism that transportation facilities influenced economic belt. In general, the improvement of transportation facilities has increased accessibility of the cities along the routes, promote factor mobility and spatial economic contacts between different areas, enlarge the market attractiveness of cities nearby and stimulate competition, division of work and cooperation. On the other hand, advanced transportation network is beneficial for economic factors agglomeration, and induce change of industrial structure. The function of both sides will accelerate the progress of regional integration of the cities along the routes, therefore, economic belt is formed.Secondly, we take the “four vertical and four horizontal” high-speed rail lines as an example and analyze how high-speed railways affect economic belt development. We begin from the change of accessibility, separately observe the spatial economic contacts, market ranges and economic agglomeration of all cities along high-speed lines, “four vertical and four horizontal” each high-speed rail, and hub cities. The results showed that, there is a positive correlation between accessibility and spatial economic contacts of the cities along the routes, which means, the development of high-speed railways will strengthen economic contacts between different cities along the rails, and shorten their relative disparities. What’s more, the market range of cities near the high-speed lines having been expanded largely, and economic activities along the routes showed spatial agglomeration, but differences exist between different areas. The level of spatial agglomeration is higher in Bei Jing-Guang Zhou route and Shang Hai-Kun Ming route, lower in Bei Jing-Shang Hai route, Qing Dao-Tai Yuan route and Hang Zhou-Fu Zhou-Shen Zhen route.Finally, we analyze the reasons that why the economic belts in our country have been built for a long time, however, the effects are not significant. On the basic of this, we predict the belts that may form in the future among the “four vertical and four horizontal” high-speed rail lines. The results showed that, Bei Jing-Shang Hai route, Shang Hai-Wu Han-Cheng Du route, and Hang Zhou-Fu Zhou-Shen Zhen route are more likely to form transportation belts along high-speed railways. Bei Jing-Harbin route, Qing Dao-Tai Yuan route will have more obstacles during the formation of transportation belts. It’s important to note that, although high-speed rails are helpful to promote the progress of regional integration and economic development along the routes, for small cities, there will also be some challenges. Small cities should take measures, such as to improve the local transport infrastructures, and adjust industrial structure, to seize the opportunity from the development of high-speed railway. Our government also has obligation to take use of the positive effects of high-speed rails and control the negative effects that may happen.