With the large-scale implementation of high-speed rail (HSR) network, China has entered in a new erafeatures with high-speed rail transportation. The launching of this new transportation infrastructure notonly offers a new option for travelers’ mode choice, but also influence, or even generate, theredistribution of demographic and economic activities. As has been observed over the past severalyears, the impact of HSR is huge. However, few quantitative studies have been conducted to measurethis impact. As a new attempt for understanding the HSR network, this paper describes anaccessibility analysis to evaluate the impacts of China’s HSR network. Weighted average travel timesand travel costs, contour measure, and potential accessibility are used as indicators of accessibility atthe macroscopic level. Forty nine major cities in the HSR network are chosen for the accessibilityanalysis. Accessibility quantification and spatial distribution analysis for the study cities are performedon the Geographical Information System (GIS) platform. Accessibilities associated with varyingavailabilities of HSR, conventional rail, and airline are estimated and compared. The selectedindicators and computational methods are found effective in evaluating the accessibility impacts ofHSR from different conceptualizations and perspectives. They also offer complementary informationon accessibility capacity to the study cities via HSR network.
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