Page 140 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 6

Beckerich, Christophe. Benoit, Sylvie. Delaplace, Marie.

1. Introduction

A number of authors have explained that the effects of high‐speed rail (HSR) services on local
economic development are heterogeneous (Sands, 1993, Delaplace, 2012, Loukaitou‐Sideris et
al., 2013, Vickerman, 2015) and the reasons for this numerous. This is particularly the case for the
establishment of businesses around stations (Mannone, 1995, Fachinetti‐Mannone, 2009, Bazin et
al., 2009, and Beckerich et al., 2016, Willigers and van Wee, 2011). The aim of this paper is to
investigate one reason for this heterogeneity, namely station location, which varies not just by
country (Givoni, 2006; Urena et al., 2009) but also by city. Sometimes, HSTs arrive at central rail
stations (historic stations in most cases, although some are more recent). In other cases, new
stations are specially built for HSR service, outside the city, directly on the high‐speed line (HSL).
These are known as peripheral, or city‐edge, railway stations .
1
In the first case, urban‐renewal operations can be implemented in order to transform the station
district into a central business district, sometimes also incorporating residential real estate.
Peripheral stations, on the other hand, tend to give rise to new business parks, as well as residential
real estate in some cases. In France, however, business parks around peripheral stations do not
always fulfil their objectives (FacchinettiMannone 2009): “while intermediate stations have been
provided on most routes, there has been little identifiable local economic development associated
with many of these stations” (Vickerman, 2015, p. 157). In Spain, as in France, projects around
central stations have tended to be more successful (Bellet et al., 2012, Mohino et al., 2014, Bazin
et al., 2009, Beckerich et al., 2016). However, analyses conducted to date have been carried out
either at central stations or at peripheral stations – but not both simultaneously – and in different
contexts. In addition, few studies have analysed the location choice of companies in station
districts. Lastly, the respective advantages associated with a location close to a central station
or a location in proximity to a peripheral station served by high‐speed rail in the same urban
area have not yet been jointly analysed. The aim of this paper is to analyse the case of Reims, a
city located 150 km to the east of Paris, which since 2007 has been served by the East European
High‐Speed Line, which calls at both the central station in Reims and Champagne‐Ardenne TGV
station, an interchange station directly connected to the rest of the high‐speed network. In both
cases, real‐estate operations have taken place, but on different timescales. In order to analyse
companies’ location choices, two surveys were conducted, the first around the central station
and the second around Champagne‐Ardenne station. This analysis allows us to eliminate the
existing bias linked to comparisons between different cities.

The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the literature concerning HSR services and
firms’ location choices around central and peripheral stations, as well as the literature concerning
HSR services and business real estate. Accessibility improvements in Reims and local policies
surrounding both of the city’s high‐speed rail stations will be analysed in Section 3. Section 4,
devoted to the presentation of both surveys, shows that high‐speed rail not only structures the
urban space but also segments it by function; and Section 5 contains some concluding remarks.

2. Location choice near a central or a peripheral high‐speed rail station
The literature identifies a number of effects of HSR on firms’ location choices and behaviour
(Table 1). But while the logic that governs technical choices of station location (Auphan 2002)
and the territorialization of different types of stations have been analysed (Fachinetti‐Mannone,
2016, Fachinetti‐Mannone and Richer 2011), the respective benefits of centrality or peripherality
have not been investigated simultaneously, only separately. Moreover, the location choices of

1 Mannone (2016) identifies six types of HSR stations in France and Spain: central stations (old or new); pericentral stations, in
urban spaces but not in the city centre; urban‐fringe stations, located at the limits of the city; periurban stations, located on
the periphery of the city in a rural environment; and bi‐urban stations, located far away from a city but serving several urban
centres; see also Bellet et al., 2012.

138 360.revista de alta velocidad