Search

As an interdisciplinary research field of rural geography and transport geography, the research of rural transport geography has gradually attracted the attention of scholars in China and overseas in recent years. The keyword co-occurrence analysis and burst detection analysis by CiteSpace software were adopted to explore the research hotspot and frontier of rural transport geography, and the research progress and trend were summarized. The results show that accessibility is the research hotspot in China and overseas, including macro spatial pattern analysis and micro travel behavior analysis; transport poverty has become the research frontier of Chinese literature, while equity and service of rural transport has become the research frontier of overseas literature. Currently, there has been some research progress about the spatial pattern, regional effects, and planning and policy of rural transport; however, due to the slow rural transport development and limited rural transport data, the attention and influence of rural transport geography research is weak. In future, under the background of rural revitalization strategy, based on regional system theory of rural man-land relations, the systematic analysis of the development laws of rural transportation system, the in-depth study on the interaction between rural transportation and other elements, and the combination of macro spatial-temporal pattern analysis and micro mechanism explanation is necessary for its theory development and practice exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Travel burden on rural residents is an important theme in transport geography. However, the empirical evidence for this remains scarce. This paper aims to shed light on rural travel burden by examining the relationship between the rural built environment and villagers' travel burden, as measured by the time and money spent on essential and regional trips. A national survey of rural residents in 287 villages across China is analysed. The results show that residents living in rural areas are more likely to be faced with travel burden than are urban residents when accessing livelihood opportunities in local rural settlements and regional urban centres. The built environment attributes are significantly correlated with residents' travel burden. Specifically, the distance from the village to the destination has the strongest relationship with essential trips compared with other built environment variables. Villagers tend to incur higher time costs for an essential or regional trip when paved roads, bus stations and high-quality roads are less accessible. Bus transfer times from the village to the town centre, the population density, and the accessibility of local facilities also show significantly correlation with villagers' travel cost. Moreover, those residents who are elderly, low-income, or have a physical disability are more likely to suffer from high travel burden. The findings will enhance our understanding of the role of land use and transport policies in releasing villagers' travel burden to achieve sustainable transport development in rural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper was to systematically obtain the poverty reduction effects and diversified poverty alleviation paths of road infrastructure, to assist in the planning of transport poverty alleviation and rural revitalization in the concentrated contiguous poverty-stricken areas. The measurement methods for impact effects and paths of transport poverty alleviation have been scientifically proposed based on methods of transportation economics and transportation geography. Firstly, an overview of the interactive mechanism and processes by which road infrastructure investment influences poverty reduction has been offered, and the characteristics of poverty space and spatial coupling result of road infrastructure have been systematically obtained. The results show that about 70% of the district counties' road infrastructure and poverty rate are in a state of spatial coupling imbalance; the coordinated synchronous type is mainly distributed along the road network. Secondly, the structural equation model system has been formulated with variables that reflect transportation input in adjacent geographical units to consider spatial spillover effects. The results show that the direct poverty reduction effect of road infrastructure (0.105) is much lower than the indirect poverty reduction effect (0.830). Thirdly, empirical analysis at regional level of the concentrated contiguous poverty-stricken areas in China has been conducted. As a result, while addressing the limitations of previous studies, the poverty alleviation path that has been proposed also aims to catalyze actions to reduce the transport-related exclusion in poverty-stricken areas caused by the lack of access to basic facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human mobility has played a major role in the spread of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis (TB) through transportation; however, its pattern and mechanism have remained unclear. This study used transport networks as a proxy for human mobility to generate the spatial process of TB incidence. It examined the association between TB incidence and four types of transport networks at the provincial level: provincial roads, national roads, highways, and railways. Geographical information systems and geospatial analysis were used to examine the spatial distribution of 2217 smear-positive TB cases reported between 2009 and 2011 in the Shandong province. The study involved factors such as population density and elevation difference in conjunction with the types of transport networks to predict the disease occurrence in space. It identified spatial clusters of TB incidence linked not only with transport networks of the regions but also differentiated by elevation. Our research findings provide evidence of targeting populous regions with well-connected transport networks for effective surveillance and control of TB transmission in Shandong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory on how different public values are prioritized in transport infrastructure planning is growing increasingly sophisticated, but most of it has focused on Western countries. Its relevance to China is thus far unknown territory. In this article, we apply the theory on public values and the way various values are traded off against each other to the case of High-Speed Rail development in China. We develop a Public value tradeoff matrix enabling us to identify and measure the various public values at play and to establish what changes took place in the prioritization of various public values over time. In the history of HSR development in China, a shift from regional equity and safety through economic growth and speed to organizational efficiency and cooperation can be observed in the period before HSR took off in China until now. The trading off process takes place through different institutional paradigms and organizational mechanisms in China than in Europe and America, and occurs more at the strategic apex of the administrative hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Due to growing traffic demand, enormous investment requirements and high fiscal pressures, China has witnessed a reshaping of financing policies in large transport infrastructure projects from public financing to Public–Private Partnerships. As a result, the provision of transport infrastructure services in China has been steadily moving from the realm of government to that of private sector. In the same period, governments at the central and regional levels were actively engaged in this institutional transition by devising corresponding policies and enacting new laws and regulations. However, in late 2009 it became clear to the authors of this article that there has been a tendency of rolling back private participation in transport infrastructure and service because of various forms of opportunistic behavior on the part of some private players and malpractices among some governmental officials in their interaction with private players, and in relatively recent a number of large transport projects have been granted to state-owned enterprises. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to analyze and explain the processes of rise and fall of Public–Private Partnership in China. We argue that the adoption of Public–Private Partnership in China is a path-dependent process rather than some economic optimum advocated by a variety of international organizations. Specifics of wider Chinese political, cultural and institutional context are recognized as important factors that influence the performance of Public–Private Partnership. Effects of decisions made under transitory conditions can persist long after those conditions have vanished. In addition, these historical legacies are important in understanding contemporary use of Public–Private Partnership in China, and they are also the origins from which the sub-optimal statuses are often led. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper sheds an empirical light on port development patterns by discussing the structure and the development of the Yangtze River ports system. We argue that the Yangtze River system is going through a regionalization phase, mainly in relation to the port of Shanghai. This process started on the lower Yangtze but is now also moving upstream. The transition towards the port regionalization phase is typically a gradual and market-driven process that mirrors the increased focus of market players on logistics integration. This paper builds on the existing literature on port systems and adapts port development models to river ports. Furthermore, we employ some statistical techniques that are common to the analysis of port systems, and introduce some techniques that have not been used much by transport geographers in ports. This paper will address the dynamics in the Yangtze River ports system by analyzing the level of cargo concentration and the degree of inequality in operations of the container ports. The paper also assesses observed differences in development of ports in different areas along the river (upstream/downstream) and reflects on the role of ownership structures in shaping regional load centre networks. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The interrelatedness of transportation development and economic growth has been a constant theme of geographic inquiries, particularly in economic and transportation geography. This paper analyzes the expansion of China’s railway network, the evolution of its spatial accessibility, and the impacts on economic growth and urban systems over a time span of about one century (1906–2000). First, major historical events and policies and their effects on railway development in China are reviewed and grouped into four major eras: preliminary construction, network skeleton, corridor building, and deep intensification. All four eras followed a path of “inland expansion.” Second, spatial distribution of accessibility and its evolution are analyzed. The spatial structure of China’s railway network is characterized by “concentric rings” with its major axis in North China and the most accessible city gradually migrating from Tianjin to Zhengzhou. Finally, the study indicates that railway network expansion has significantly improved economic development and heavily influenced the formation of urban systems in China. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The authors examine possible ways to enhance interdisciplinary dialogue between transport geography and economic geography, its parent discipline. In the context of emerging paradigms of global production seeking to capture the outsourcing process with developing countries, the port-free-trade zone bundle is suggested as a valid intersect between spaces of production and spaces of circulation. Such zones act as interfaces between local and global spaces: they are spaces of global articulation. A case study of how such global articulation spaces are created in China is presented from the example of the Tianjin Economic Development Area (TEDA). Evidence suggests that, as the world factory, China purposely set up port-FEZs (free economic zone) in pairs and the use of containerized transport has been highly restricted to port-related production places; hence a dualism has been created in China's transport. It is found that TEDA consists of a continuum of customs-regulated spaces which act as a transition zone between domestic and international ‘status’ commodities following a global production logic. At the same time, the creation of such enclaves consolidates a spatial ‘splintering’ effect that alienates such enclaves from their surroundings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an important infrastructure connecting straits or rivers, the construction of fixed links has become an effective measure for improving traffic conditions and promoting socio-economic development in many countries and regions around the world. Thus, it has become a significant topic in the field of transport geography. Taking the Yangtze River Delta as its case area, this study proposes a spatial impact model of trans-Yangtze highway fixed links, consisting of three components: an accessibility model, modified gravity model, and traffic utilisation model, which are used to analyse, respectively, cross-Yangtze accessibility and changes to transport structure, cross-Yangtze urban interaction and changes to economic structure, and the utilisation relationship of fixed links. Making use of existing fixed links while planning and building new ones has become the basis for achieving regional integration and sub-regional cooperation in this area, the aim of which is to create the barrier-free circulation of elements. The results prove that this spatial impact model coincides with reality. The increase in the number of fixed links has significantly shortened cross-river travel time and facilitated a unification of north-south highway networks. It has also promoted the formation of a high-connection urban network along the river. Northern urban nodes have joined the southern economic circle and finally achieved north-south integration. There are complex relationships between fixed links and their hinterlands, showing obvious utilisation gaps between the links. The complete system of trans-Yangtze fixed links is comprised of several river crossing facilities and connected highways. The function of each link is related to its role in the regional highway network. From a small number of fixed links to the realisation of multiple trans-Yangtze bridges and tunnels with easy access to multiple arterial highways, a 'many-to-many' spatial pattern is created that ultimately leads to the evolution of regional transport and economic structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transport geography has made significant progress since the 2000s, attending now not only to transport's spatial properties, but also its economic, developmental, and, most recently, environmental intersections. As its eponymous journal celebrates its twenty-fifth year, this article seeks to introduce another dimension—geopolitics—by which the field can make further breakthroughs. Despite a few similar calls in the early-2010s, research contextually grounded in the mutual imbrications between transport and geopolitics has remained scant. This diverges from how the field used to countenance states' geopolitical strategies much more rigorously in the early-twentieth century, gracing topics such as imperial corridors, civilizing missions through mobility, and the establishment of world transport orders. Using China's Belt and Road Initiative as a prompt and exemplar, this paper argues for more sustained research on three broad geopolitical strands in the future. These strands are: transport visions and imaginations, rule-making in transport, and militarism in transport. Demonstrating the centrality of geopolitical discourses and practices in China's Belt and Road Initiative and other large-scale transport projects, this paper argues that geopolitics is not merely a background fact 'out there' affecting transport. Rather, it is an integral part of the asymmetrical production, organization and impedance of transport's geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the relationship between human mobility and land use has been a longstanding topic in multiple disciplines, including transport geography and urban planning. Recently, urban collective mobility patterns have become a hot research direction and has been explored at an unprecedented space–time scale due to the emerging big human tracking datasets (e.g., mobile phone data). However, only a few studies have comprehensively quantified the effects of land use on human mobility patterns while considering the influence of the scale of spatial analysis units. This study attempts to reinforce this knowledge by investigating urban human convergence–divergence patterns and their relationship with land use distribution characteristics at three popular types of spatial analysis units of human mobility studies (voronoi polygons, grid cells, and traffic analysis zones) using mobile phone data. A case study on Shenzhen, China is implemented, and results indicate that eight distinct convergence–divergence patterns could be extracted to describe urban collective mobility patterns despite the use of different types of spatial analysis unit. Moreover, the scale of spatial analysis units exerts a few effects on the quantification of the influence of land use distribution on human convergence–divergence patterns, but some common characteristics could be summarized from these discrepant results. The findings can help policy makers understand urban human mobility and can serve as a guide for urban management and planning. • Human convergence–divergence patterns and their relationship with land use distribution characteristics are investigated. • Three popular types of spatial analysis units are used to check the effect of MAUP. • Eight distinct convergence–divergence processes are extracted to describe urban human mobility patterns. • Some common land use characteristics are summarized from three types of spatial analysis units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]