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Impacts of station accessibility and regional heterogeneity on HSR ridership

Taken the perspective from a regional point of view, this paper examines how access
transportation affects the local demand of THSR. It is a suitable case study for researchers
to investigate the impact of a single HSR route for the country and to understand
the passenger’s travel behavior. Especially the differences among region’s economic
developments and city characteristics, how it would influence HSR demand over time.

2. Literature Reviews

Accessibility is quite an important topic, especially for transit system as already confirmed
by many studies. Murray (2003) noted that accessible and efficient service is vital
features, especially for well-utilized public transit systems. Mitra and Saphores (2016)
investigated the recently published studies which identify the impacts of accessibility on
property value of transit. They also argued that a positive relationship between accessibly
improvements and property values has been verified by a number of literatures ((e.g.,
Cervero and Kang (2011) for Seoul’s Bus Rapid Transit; Debrezion et al. (2011) for road
accessibility on office prices in the Netherlands; or Dubé et al. (2013) for commuter rail
accessibility in Montreal).

Accessibility to rail station becomes more important factor for rail transit in particular.
The accessibility of the railway station can be a factor in determining if rail is chosen
as a travel alternative (Hine and Scott, 2000; Krygsman et al., 2004; Wardman and Hine,
2000; Wardman and Tyler, 2000; Brons et al., 2009). In order to provide highest quality
se1vices to its users, railways need to pay attention not only to the standard qualitative
and quantitative indicators, but also to the accessibility of the railway station (Bogovic
et al, 2003). Brons et al. (2009) indicated that rail operators aiming at increasing rail use
must consider the aspect of satisfaction with its level. Here, they argued that access-
to-the station is an important part in passengers’ overall satisfaction with rail journey.
Many past studies have also confirmed the importance of accessibility to the station.
Keijer and Rietveld (2000), Rietveld (2000) and Givoni and Rietveld (2007) investigated
the accessibility of rail travelers to the railway stations focusing on their mode choice
(Brons et al., 2009).
The high-speed rail (HSR) is becoming more and more popular as a representative transport
mode of railway in recent years. Therefore, based on the above literatures, access-
to-the station is also one of the major factors which should be considered carefully
in the case of HSR. According to the report of California High-Speed Rail Authority, it
should be important to prioritize and obtain a balancing of many transport modes for
station accessibility so that all users will be safe and comfortable moving to and from
the HSR station and surrounding areas. Moreover, Eidlin (2015) argued that “high speeds
(HSR) should be prioritized in sparsely populated places, while maximizing connections
should be the primary consideration in densely populated places”. Referring to these,
intraregional station accessibility might be one of the issues at stake in the problem of
securing sustained HSR demand
This paper continues the line of research on access to railway stations as an extension
study of Li and Schmöcker (2014) and it has two broad aims as follow. First, to demonstrate
that factors of access-to the station serves as a key element in explaining passenger
demand of HSR with regional heterogeneity such as socioeconomic characteristics.
Secondly, to investigate which public transport between bus and urban rail system is the
most influential on increasing HSR ridership. This would also show the degree of influence
by access transport modes on increase of accessibility to HSR station. The Taiwan HSR
network is used as a case study as mentioned earlier.

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