With the formation of the Four Vertical and Four Horizontal high speed railway (HSR) network in China, HSR has significantly improved Chinese regional accessibility. This paper evaluates the effect of HSRs on the economic growth in China using the data from 2007 to 2016 and uses the Gradient Boosting Regression Tree to carry out an empirical test. The paper argues that when analyzing the economic impact of new transportation means, both the construction of itself and improvement of transportation conditions should be taken into account. Therefore, the HSR was studied by operation mileages and its proportion to total railway mileage. The main conclusion from the paper is that Chinese HSR has a positive effect on economic growth. The difference of the purpose and background of HSR construction between China and other countries may be the reasons for the inconsistency of the research conclusions. Thus, Chinese government needs to optimize the HSR networks and improve transport services.
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