Using contact potential measurements to analyse future intercity links made possible by the Tours–Bordeaux High-Speed Rail line

New high-speed rail transport infrastructures produce profound time-space changes that make new activities possible. Our aim is to measure the impact of such changes on potential business or leisure travel between cities.We develop a contact potential indicator (Törnqvist, 1970) that measures the po...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Alain L’Hostis, Liu Liu, Thomas Leysens
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Société Royale Belge de Géographie and the Belgian National Committee of Geography 2017-07-01
Series:Belgeo
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/19584
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:New high-speed rail transport infrastructures produce profound time-space changes that make new activities possible. Our aim is to measure the impact of such changes on potential business or leisure travel between cities.We develop a contact potential indicator (Törnqvist, 1970) that measures the possibility of making a trip to a distant location within the desirable time-space prism. The indicator is developed in the context of the high-speed rail line between Tours and Bordeaux.The results demonstrate the possibility of contact from a series of key cities affected by new high-speed rail infrastructure, both before and after project completion. Our analysis shows that Bordeaux benefits greatly from the extension of the rail line: the preferred method of contact to Paris will switch to rail from the current air preference, and several cities that cannot be reached in the current pre-project conditions will become “contactable”. Other cities that benefit are Angoulême, Tours and Poitiers.
ISSN:1377-2368
2294-9135