Jason Cao

The Impacts of LRT, Neighbourhood Characteristics, and Self-selection on Auto Ownership: Evidence from Minneapolis-St. Paul

There is a growing interest in exploring the relationships between the built environment and auto ownership and a number of studies have investigated the impact of rail transit on travel behaviour. However, few have disentangled the impact of rail transit on auto ownership from the influences of the built environment and residential self-selection. Using the light rail transit (LRT) in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, USA, this study applies the statistical control approach and quasi-longitudinal design to examine the effects of LRT, neighbourhood design and self-selection on auto ownership. It is found that residential self-selection influences auto ownership; backyard size, off-street parking and business density marginally affect auto ownership; and the LRT does not have an independent impact on auto ownership beyond neighbourhood design and self-selection. The results point to the importance of neighbourhood design in rail transit development.

The association between transit access and auto ownership: evidence from Guangzhou, China

ABSTRACT In many developing countries, massive investment in transit infrastructure is concurrent with the proliferation of automobiles. Planners expect that investment can slow the growth of auto ownership. However, few studies have examined the relationships between transit access and auto ownership in developing countries, whereas research in developed countries offers mixed findings and the outcomes may not be applicable to developing countries. This study employs a random effect ordered probit model on data collected from Guangzhou residents in 2011–2012. We find that transit access is negatively associated with auto ownership, after controlling for demographics and other built environment variables. This result suggests that, although income is the dominant driver for auto ownership in growing developing countries, transit investment is a promising strategy to slow the growth of auto ownership. This study also highlights the importance of addressing spatial dependency in clustered data.

Influences of LRT on travel behaviour: A retrospective study on movers in Minneapolis:

Following scant evidence for the effects of proximity to rail transit on car use, we pinpoint the impacts of rail transit and neighbourhood characteristics on both transit and car use in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. We apply the structural equations modelling approach on 597 residents who moved into the Hiawatha Light Rail Transit (LRT) corridor after it opened. The analysis is based on a self-administrated survey where all attributes of the built environment and transit quality are perceived measures. Using a quasi-longitudinal design to compare the behaviour of movers into the Hiawatha and control corridors, we found that the Hiawatha LRT acts as both a catalyst and a magnet. Movers into the Hiawatha corridor experience transit improvement, which increases transit use and reduces car use. The LRT also enables transit-liking people who were unable to realise their preference previously to relocate near the LRT. However, the LRT has no significant effects on changes in car ownership.

Exploring correlates of passenger satisfaction and service improvement priorities of the Shanghai-Nanjing High Speed Rail

Assessing passenger satisfaction is essential to enhancing loyalty and increasing ridership on high speed rail (HSR). Many studies explore passenger satisfaction with transit and conventional railway, but there are only a few that look at HSR. Although the HSR studies provide information on the relationship between service quality and passenger satisfaction, few identify the attributes that have the largest impact or improvement priorities for existing HSR. This study employs multivariate regression and importance-performance analysis to identify influential attributes and service improvement priorities for the Shanghai-Nanjing HSR. We found that the most important correlates of passenger satisfaction were staff attitudes, convenience of ticket purchase, and ease of the access trip. In general, passengers are satisfied with HSR services, especially with the attributes that are critical to overall HSR satisfaction. However, we found that improving toilet sanitation and seat comfort on the Shanghai-Nanjing HSR would increase passenger satisfaction.

High-speed rail

The special issue is organized in response to a growing interest in High-Speed Rail (HSR) development worldwide. In 1964, the first HSR, Tokaido Shinkansen, began revenue service in Japan. In 1981, France completed its first Train à Grande Vitesse line from Paris to Lyon, followed by the Intercity Express in Germany in 1991, the Alta Velocidad Española in Spain in 1992, and the Korea Train Express in South Korea in 2004. In October 2003, China opened its first HSR, the Qin-Shen Passenger Line. Since then, China has launched a new era of rapid HSR construction. By 2016, HSR in China grew to 22,000 km,1 accounting for about two-thirds of HSR in the world. In all these countries, HSR has become an important factor facilitating sustainable transportation, spurring urbanization and land development, and promoting urban and regional economic development (e.g. Chen et al. 2016; Diao, Zhu, and Zhu 2016; Liu, Lund, and Mathiesen 2013; Zhu, Yu, and Chen 2015). High-speed trains travel at faster speeds than conventional trains, with a maximum speed over 200 km per hour. High-speed trains have many advantages. For example, (1) individuals’ activity space increases substantially as they can make a daily round trip to locations that are farther away; (2) people have a better access to various high-order goods and services (e.g. specialized hospitals and luxury goods); (3) people enjoy more flexibility in choosing where to live and where to work. However, there are some disadvantages associated with the HSR technology. First, because of their speed requirements, high-speed trains cannot stop very frequently. Some smaller cities and towns tend to have less frequent train service than before. Second, HSR often aims to shorten travel time between major cities. Accordingly, smaller cities and towns have to construct new HSR stations that are outside of their existing urban settlements, increasing the risk of leapfrog development (Zhu, Yu, and Chen 2015). Third, HSR brings cities and towns closer together and increases competition among them because their marketplaces have more overlap than before. This poses a number of challenges to smaller cities and towns, as they are vulnerable to competition from larger cities (Chen 2012). The impact of HSR on travel behavior is substantive and merits further investigation. First, HSR attracts customers from air travel (Zhang, Yang, and Wang 2017). It increases pressure on the aviation industry, especially short-distance air travel (Li and Loo 2017). Second, as high-speed trains sometimes operate on the same tracks as conventional trains, they reduce the amount of conventional train service. This brings social equity concerns as low-income people are more dependent on cheaper and slower conventional trains. Third, the impact of HSR on automobile use needs more attention from researchers. HSR changes residential location choice as people become more footloose. In some large metropolises, commuting distances for some people have become so long that commuting by car is less efficient than by HSR. The travel behavior changes in these long-distance commuters have important implications for land-use policy and housing policy. The impact of HSR on automobile use is also obvious for non-work travel (i.e. vacation trips, meeting friends, etc.). It is faster, more comfortable, more relaxing, and in most cases, cheaper than driving a car. Empirical research on this topic is greatly needed. The influence of HSR on urban and regional development is also tremendous. The market potential of cities and regions improves as the ranges of marketplaces at all levels increase. This brings both opportunities and challenges. For cities providing high-order goods and services (which require a large population threshold and long travel distance; e.g. luxury cars and specialized hospitals), their market can now cover a much larger range. Smaller cities and towns face more competition from neighboring larger cities. It becomes increasingly important for these smaller places to define their unique resources in order to benefit from the improved accessibility. Given the impact of HSR on cities and regions across the world, we have edited this special issue with the goal of attracting more attention from scholars, practitioners and policymakers. To facilitate discussion among scholars, four sessions were organized at the 9th Annual Conference of International Association for China Planning (IACP), which Dr. Cao was honored to chair, at Chongqing University in June 2015. After the standard review process, we accepted three papers for this issue. Because Chang and Jung (2017), a regular submission to this journal, fits the theme of HSR, it is also included in this special issue. The remainder of this foreword briefly introduces these four studies. Shen et al. (2017) examine the effects of the Madrid-Seville HSR on land development. Using land-cover data from 1991 to 2006, they assess newly developed lands throughout five provinces. They conclude that land development occurred mostly in Madrid and Seville and HSR seems to have had a limited impact. However, within three smaller HSR cities, HSR appeared to direct land development towards the five-kilometer catchment area of HSR stations, whereas land development in Madrid and Seville largely occurred beyond the catchment area, because of land availability. Furthermore, HSR improved the accessibility of the whole region, and Seville experienced the largest increase among all five provinces. Binary logit/probit models of landcover changes show that regional accessibility improvement and population growth were the main drivers of land development in smaller cities, but these two factors have a limited explanatory power for land development in the two larger terminal cities. Taken together, the HSR benefited the two larger cities more than the three smaller cities. Givoni and Chen (2017) evaluate the extent of air–HSR integration in the Shanghai Hongqiao Transportation Hub. They contend that although there is a growing interest in air–rail integration, the practice worldwide seems to deviate from the policy objective. The Hongqiao hub is not an exception. First, secondary sources indicate that the airport serves residents of both Shanghai and surrounding regions, whereas the rail station serves mainly Shanghai residents, and that passengers transferring from the airport account for less than 5% of rail passengers. So ‘this integration is relatively limited.’2 Second, the 2020 ridership forecast for the hub does not show that air–HSR integration is a strategic priority. Third, interviews with local experts and policy makers also lead to a conclusion of low integration

The Association Between Travel and Satisfaction with Travel and Life: Evidence from the Twin Cities

Satisfaction with life (SWL) is a global judgment of life, which includes family, work, social life among others. Although previous studies have explored the impact of the major life domains on SWL, few have focused on travel. Travel presumably affects satisfaction with travel (SWT), which in turn contributes to SWL. Using data from residents in the Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area (Twin Cities), we employ structural equations models to explore the relationships between travel and SWT/SWL. As expected, SWT has a positive association with SWL. Vehicle miles driven is positively associated with SWL but negatively associated with SWT, and therefore, its total effect on life satisfaction is insignificant. Most measures of travel have negative associations with SWL through SWT, consistent with the theory of disutility of travel. However, the detrimental effect is not large. Because having a driver’s license is positively associated with SWL, planning strategies should be developed to meet the daily needs of those without a license and to improve their life satisfaction in an automobile-oriented society.