Competition and cooperation of high-speed rail and air transport in China: a perspective from spatial service market view

With a large-scale construction of high-speed rail, its safety, economy and competition with air transport have become the foci of scholars. Today, transport infrastructure is playing a more and more important role in economic and industry layout. Under the background, the paper conducts studies on the market competition and cooperation of high-speed rail and air transport in China. First, the paper measures the spatial service market of high-speed rail and air transport by road transport with GIS method. Second, the paper analyzes the service overlapping market of high-speed rail and air transport. A city having both a high-speed rail station and an airport or the area enjoying the high-speed rail and air transport service in 1/2 hours by road transport is defined as the overlapping market. Besides, the paper discusses and stimulates the spatial effect of competition and cooperation between high-speed rail and air transport. Results indicate that: (1) Both high-speed rail and air transport are inclined to serve economy and population, and they can cover most of the population and GDP in 2 hours by road transport; (2) Different technique characteristics in distance decide their own advantageous markets. The service market of high-speed rail spatially mainly cover economic belts in Eastern and Central China, and air transport has competitive advantage in Western China. (3) With the rapid construction of high-speed rail and air transport, their overlapping markets will become larger and larger; therefore urban clusters, metropolitan areas, and economic belts will become their major competitive markets. Considering the higher construction costs and a smaller number of passengers as well as its competition with air transport in Western China, we suggest the Central Government slow down the pace of high-speed rail construction in this region.