Page 314 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 6

Kim, Junghwa. Schmöcker, Jan-Dirk. Li, Yeun-Touh. Demizu, Fumiaki.

1. Introduction

As interest in high-speed rail (HSR) rises around the world its
network is rapidly expanding across continents. HSR is currently
in more than 20 countries in operation (including the UK,
France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Japan, China,
Korea, and Taiwan). The predicted demand before construction
is often overestimated though compared to the observed HSR
ridership in particular in the first years of operation as discussed
in Li et al (2016) with Taiwan data and Demizu et al (2017) with
data from Tohoku, Japan. They argued this could be the lack
of sufficient consideration regarding the time people require
adapting to new transportation systems. In the case of the
Northeast Japan Shinkansen extension project from Hachinohe
(Aomori) to Shin-Aomori (Aomori) which started operation in
2010, the transportation density was 8,300 {(rail passenger-km
per day)/rail km-operated} in the initial year but it has grown
to 8,800 in 2011 and it reached 9,000 one year later (JR, 2016).
To achieve a stable, high demand within a short time period
after construction is an important issue though for sustainable
HSR planning and its operation.

In order to investigate the pure impact of a single HSR project Fig. 1 THSR route and stations
for the country and passenger’s travel behavior, we take Taiwan
as a case study area. THSR (Taiwan high speed rail) connects the two largest metropolitan
areas, Taipei and Kaohsiung, within a travel time of about 90 minutes. The THSR operation
between Banqiao (Taipei) and Zuoying (Kaohsiung) started in January 2007. Subsequently, it
extended to Taipei Station in central Taipei two months later. The target period of our research
is from March 2007 to April 2015. Within this time period no further stations were opened. The
eight HSR stations that are operated in this period are shown in Figure 1.

Table 1. Information of city with THSR station

Distance Travel Population(thousands)
City from Time from
No. Name
scale capital, Taipei Sta. Annual
Taipei (km) (min) 2007 2015 Growth Rate
Taipei/
1 L 0 0 6,402 6,672 0.52%
Banqiao
2 Taoyuan S 36.4 22 1,913 2,062 0.94%

3 Hsinchu S 66.3 35 883 970 1.18%

4 Taichung M 159.8 49 2,588 2,742 0.73%
5 Chiayi S 245.7 89 826 795 -0.48%

6 Tainan S 308.0 106 1,867 1,885 0.12%

7 Zuoying M 339.3 94 2,761 2,779 0.08%

312 360.revista de alta velocidad