Research Of Agglomeration Economic Effect Of High Speed Rail On Cities In China

As an important achievement of contemporary science and technology integrated innovation, high speed rail is one of the breakthrough technology for passenger transportation and has a profound influence in the history of the world’s railway transportation. China’s high speed rail has changed the traffic pattern, and makes a great impact on regional spatial structure, movement of production factors, and other economic activity. The development of high speed rail makes a significant impact on the economic development and spatial pattern of the cities along the route of high speed rail, so the agglomeration and diffusion effects of high speed rail has been paid more and more attention. With the acceleration of regional economic integrity, it is important to optimize the development strategy of high speed rail, strengthen the economic links between cities, promote the optimization of spatial structure of regional economy and accelerate development of regional economy. So it is of great significance to explore the agglomeration economy effece of cities along a high speed rail.This paper observes the effect of high speed rail on the agglomeration of cities and discusses the mechanism of action. High speed rail can make a significant improvement on accessibility of cities with high speed rail stations. It acts on time, space and psychology by the compression of time and space, and influences people’s traffic mode choosing behaviors and urban economic activities, then makes a impact on the interaction between cities, and what happens next is the change of the agglomeration rents. To pursue the agglomeration rents, production factors flow bewteen cities. The reallocation production of factors of has led to the emergence of economies of scale, economy of scope, specialization, diversification and the spatial spillover effects. So high speed rail exerts an important influence on agglomeration economic. The mechanism of action is high speed rail causess the change of accessibility, and the change of the accessibility causes the change of the agglomeration rent, and the change of the agglomeration rent lead to the agglomeration of the cities’economy and space.Empirical research based on DID (in differences difference) model estimates the impact of agglomeration effect, and makes a robustness test. Empirical analysis is carried out at the national level and the eastern, middle and western regions, and the agglomeration economy index is measured by four indicators of third industrial location entropy, economic density, employment density and market potential. The empirical results show that the effect of high speed railway on urban agglomeration economy in the eastern, middle and western regions is different, the promotion in the western region is the most obvious. This reveals that the development of high speed rail is conducive to the development of regional economy in China, and to a certain extent, it has expanded the regional economic differentiation level. Finally, Zhengzhou was selected for case to to analyze the agglomeration effects of high speed railway.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1) High speed railway can improve the accessibility, which is the premise of the impact of agglomeration economy. (2) There are significant differences in the level of agglomeration economy in the East, middle and west regions, and the operation of high speed railway is conducive to the economic development. (3) China’s high speed railway promotes economic development in the western region, it is the balance between "fair" and "efficiency".Finally, according to the main conclusions, this paper puts forward some relevant policy recommendations.