Analysis of mobility impacts of the high speed Rome–Naples rail link using withinday dynamic mode service choice models

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Abstract

The decrease in travel times, the better quality of the supplied services and the improved accessibility are the main factors of success of High Speed Rail links.

In this paper, evidence of the impacts of the High Speed Rail line between Rome and Naples in Italy will be provided on the basis of a survey which was carried out in March 2008.

A Revealed Preference (RP) survey was undertaken by Trenitalia (the Commercial Division of Italian railways) and three different questionnaires were prepared to be submitted to car users, Intercity train users and High Speed train users. They all have in common questions concerning the socioeconomic characteristics of the users, questions related to the existence of possible time constraints for the trip undertaken and questions concerning previous travel choices.

Data from Trenitalia highlighted that the use of car and of Intercity trains had almost remained unchanged during the few years of operation of the High Speed service. However, a generated demand was derived from the use of this High Speed Rail link and this means that the introduction of the High Speed service between Rome and Naples probably had impacts, as excepted, on mobility choices (i.e. increase in trip frequency, new trips never done before, etc.). Data gathered were used first of all to understand this phenomenon and then to estimate a mode choice model to reproduce/forecast modal share. Specifically the choice between car and rail was modelled through a schedule based approach and with a Nested Logit model with the “train” utility function including late and early penalties.

Research highlights

► Revealed Preference survey to analyse Rome-Naples High Speed Rail users’ choice behaviour ► Cities linked by High Speed Rail are transformed into a functional region ► Previous car users leave car in favour of High Speed Rail ► Schedule based approach to model mode choice ► Nested Logit approach: “train” utility function with late and early penalties

Introduction

The development of High Speed Rail (HSR) has been one of the central features of recent European Union transport infrastructure policy. The proposals for a European HSR network emerged in a report of the Community of European Railways in 1990 and this was adopted as the base for what became the European Community’s proposed Trans-European Network (Vickerman, 1997). The latter is essentially the linking together of a series of national plans for promoting HSR improvements, emerged during the 1970s and 1980s. The Italian solution has been that of investing in new lines to overcome particularly difficult stretches of route.

The development of the High Speed/High Capacity (HS/HC) network in Italy should be conceived within the wider context of the Trans-European corridors. Specifically, the projects within which Italy is involved, apart from the “water highways”, are:

  • Priority Project no. 1: rail section Berlin–Verona–Milan–Bologna–Naples–Palermo.

  • Priority Project no. 6 which, by linking Lisbon to Kiev, goes through the Po Valley; it corresponds to the V TenEuropean Corridor.

  • Pan-European Corridor VIII: intermodal section Varna–Sofia–Bari.

  • Priority Project no. 24: rail link between the port of Genoa and that of Rotterdam through the Gottardo tunnel.

The HS/HC project in Italy, despite many problems and delays, is a “work in progress” and in the coming years new sections will be opened. Apart from the already operating sections (Rome–Naples to Gricignano, Turin–Novara, Milan–Bologna and Naples–Salerno), other lines will be opened soon such as the Gricignano–Naples, Novara–Milan and Bologna–Florence. According to what the FS Group (Italian railways) states, by 2009 a series of interventions will be operational for hundreds of kilometres linking together Turin–Milan–Bologna–Florence–Rome–Naples–Salerno. This will have a significant impact on the transportation system of Italy, with large reductions in travel times mainly over medium and long distances (equal to 40–50%).

This project is demanding from an economic point of view; the cost of the section Turin–Milan–Naples is around 32 billion Euros and it represents the biggest investment in infrastructures in Italy after the “motorway age”.

The first country in the world to build a HSR line was Japan with the Shinkansen line. In 1964 the first HS train travelled from Tokyo to Nagoya passing through Osaka. The first HS line in Europe, designed at the beginning of the 1960s, was the Direttissima Rome–Florence. The first HS link in France was the Paris–Lyon and it was opened in 1981. In the second half of the 1980s, the Hannover–Würzburg HSR line was opened in Germany; while in Spain the section Madrid–Cordoba–Seville of 470 km long was inaugurated in 1992.

In 2000 Italy had 248 km of HSR line, i.e. around half of those of Germany and Spain and even 1/5 of that of France. In 2006 there were 562 km of new lines with the opening of the Rome–Naples (to Gricignano) and of the Turino–Novara HS rail sections. However, in the same period, Spain increased its HSR kilometres from 470 to 1225. Therefore, it can be deduced that Italy has made a big step forward during the last years and it will make more (Cascetta and Gentile, 2007).

In Europe three different models of rail systems can be identified:

  • the French HSR system, conceived only for passengers, set on new lines with peaks of speed equal to 300 km/h and non-stop connections between metropolitan areas (High Speed system);

  • the German HSR system, conceived for both passengers and freight, serving also intermediate cities with a system of trains with different speed not exceeding 250 km/h, developed on the basis of existing renewed lines (High Capacity system);

  • the Swiss-English HSR system, consisting in speeding up the Intercity service to 200–225 km/h, combined with a train every hour for any other destination on the network and connections in all the stations, at the same time, with all the passengers’ trains (High Speed system).

High-speed trains can be used to solve two different accessibility problems. In the first case, where a point-to-point link is dominant, each train is a potential substitute for an air connection between two cities, i.e. it connects cities (or rather CBDs) over long distance with a direct train connection (Bruinsma and Rietveld, 1993, Blum et al., 1997). The HS train links between Paris and Lyon, Paris and London and, Tokyo and Osaka, could be seen as examples of this first type of train connection. In this case the train trip together with access and egress times should be compared with the competing solution which consists of the air trip plus the trip to the airport at the trip origin and the trip from the airport at the trip destination.

In the second case, where a HS network is dominant, the train system links together many cities and CBDs and, hence, creates a new type of region with high intra-regional accessibility sharing a common labour market and a common market for household and business services. In this case the HS train binds together cities in a band, where each pair of cities is at a time distance of between 20 and 55 min, i.e. a time distance that allows daily commuting. In, for example, Germany and Italy a number of cities are connected in exactly this manner by HS train.

In this paper, evidence of the impacts of the HSR link between Rome and Naples is provided on the basis of a survey which has been carried out in March 2008.

On the basis of the results from the survey, modal split, i.e. the choice between car and rail, has been modelled through a schedule based approach and with a Nested Logit (NL) model with the “train” utility function including late and early penalties (Cascetta and Papola, 2003).

This paper is organised as follows. Section 2 describes the Italian HSR system focussing on the Rome–Naples link. Section 3 describes the results of the Revealed Preference (RP) survey. In Section 4 estimation results of the mode choice are reported, while in Section 5 conclusions and further perspectives are reported.

Section snippets

The HSR system in Italy: the Rome–Naples link

The “Direttissima” (HS line) between Rome and Florence was opened in 1981 and it represents the first example of HS rail link in Italy. This was a specific response to the poor quality of the conventional rail route between these cities, which was also the main link between Rome and Northern Italy. However, Italy is currently undertaking a major expansion of HSR. Once it is completed in 2014, most major cities will be connected to the network. The key objectives for the construction that is

Revealed Preference (RP) survey on the Rome–Naples link

In the literature there are more case studies of point-to-point HSR links longer than 400 km where the aeroplane is the competitive transport mode such as Paris–Lyon (427 km) in France (Bonnafous, 1987) or the 535 km HS rail link between Madrid and Seville in Spain (Lopez-Pita and Robustè, 2005). HSR links for short distance, like the case under study, where car is the competitive means of transport are to the authors’ knowledge relatively unexplored. The HSR link between Rome and Naples could be

The mode choice model

The mode choice model has been specified following a schedule based approach, i.e. by introducing in the “train” utility functions the “late” and “early penalties” (Cascetta and Papola, 2003, Cascetta, 2009). These attributes represent, for each user and for each specific train service, the difference between his/her desired departure/arrival time and that scheduled for the specific train service.

The choice set is made up of 13 different alternatives: “car” and 12 “train alternatives”

Conclusions and further perspectives

The idea of Trans-European Networks emerged at the beginning of the 1990s in conjunction with the proposed Single Market. It made little sense to talk of a big market, with freedom of movement within it for goods, persons and services, unless the various regions and national networks making up that market were properly linked by modern and efficient infrastructure. The construction of Trans-European Networks is also an important element for economic growth and the creation of new jobs.

Under the

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