Shanghai and Suzhou are still newborn "little hairs", weaving urban agglomerations through rail transit | rail transit | urban agglomerations
A few days ago, Suzhou Metro Line 11 officially opened for operation, and the rail transit between Shanghai and Suzhou successfully joined hands, helping to promote the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration. Throughout the integration process of more mature urban agglomerations abroad, the integration of transportation and the development of regional economic circles are interdependent.
The concept of urban agglomerations was proposed by French scholars in 1957, mainly referring to highly urbanized and integrated urban clusters. Urban agglomerations promote regional coordinated development through rational layout.
A world-class urban cluster refers to an urban community centered around one or more major cities, relying on convenient transportation conditions to achieve economic connections, complementary functions, and integrated development with surrounding cities.
Currently, world-class urban agglomerations, as clusters of multiple cities in modern metropolitan areas, have become an important spatial form leading global economic development and highly concentrated population.
The vigorous development of modern rail transit system is of great strategic significance for the construction and development of world-class urban agglomerations. The globally recognized world-class urban agglomerations include the Atlantic coastal urban agglomerations in the northeast of the United States, the Great Lakes urban agglomerations in North America, the British urban agglomerations, the Northwest European urban agglomerations, and the Tokyo urban agglomerations in Japan. These world-class urban agglomerations all use rail transportation as an important tool to provide convenient, high-capacity, safe, and green transportation services for the population of urban agglomerations. They have their own unique concepts and practices in the fields of legal protection, planning and construction, and route coordination of intercity transportation.
75 year Tokyo Urban Agglomeration
After 9 rounds of rail transit planning
If urban agglomerations are strategic carriers that support high-quality national economic development, then the rail transit network is the spatial backbone of urban agglomerations, directly affecting urban layout, industrial structure, economic development, etc.
Within the urban agglomeration rail transit system, there are mainly various rail transit systems such as trunk railways, intercity railways, urban railways, and urban rail transit. These rail transit systems also have significant differences in operating areas, speed levels, transportation capacity, driving modes, right of way division, laying methods, and vehicle selection.
At the same time, due to the close transportation connections between cities within urban agglomerations, rail transit systems such as intercity railways and urban railways that undertake cross regional passenger transportation tasks often have multiple ownership rights, and their dispatch and command work often involves multiple rail transit operation entities and dispatch and command institutions, with a relatively complex operation and dispatch command environment. For the operating entities of rail transit, they face the challenges of innovative transportation organization models and regional "competition and cooperation" games.
The most important thing in this process is the word "money". The investment amount of rail transit is high, the investment payback period is long, and the investment return has the characteristics of high social benefits and low direct economic benefits. Therefore, fundraising is almost a common problem that the world needs to face. To this end, countries around the world have implemented various investment and subsidy policies to raise funds for the construction and operation of rail transit.
Japan's investment and subsidy methods include interest free and low interest loans, specific urban railway construction funds, user and beneficiary burden funds, subway construction subsidies, and railway construction subsidies for connecting new urban areas. The financing methods in the United States include charging non transportation facility users, issuing bonds or lotteries, and private investment by land developers. The subsidy methods in the UK include investment insurance and tax incentives.
Taking Japan's specific urban railway construction fund as an example, the country guarantees construction funds through tax exemption during rail transit construction, reducing project loans and corresponding interest; After completion and operation, a fund based on fare surcharges will be established to return the same amount of funds as the fund to the tickets as income, in order to reduce future ticket prices. In order to achieve reasonable fees, funds are only established in the construction target area, without affecting the ticket prices of passengers who do not use the target area. In addition, this policy also uses a portion of the revenue from rail transit as construction funds to reduce the borrowing burden during the construction of new lines, achieving a healthy and sustainable development of rail transit construction.
Under such a funding framework, the Tokyo metropolitan area in Japan has conducted in-depth exploration in the field of integrated rail transit.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Agglomeration is centered around Tokyo and covers one capital and seven prefectures, including Chiba Prefecture, Saitama Prefecture, Gunma Prefecture, Tochigi Prefecture, Kanagawa Prefecture, Ibaraki Prefecture, and Yamanashi Prefecture. The total population exceeds 41.46 million, and the GDP accounts for one-third of Japan's total, with an urbanization level of 85%.
From 1925 to 2000, the Tokyo metropolitan area underwent nine rail transit plans, and through the government's "Commuter Five Direction Operation Plan" and "New Line and Double Line Construction Project System," the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and private railway enterprises were allowed to jointly participate in the construction of the Tokyo regional subway, ushering in a period of high-speed construction for Tokyo's rail transit. At present, the Tokyo metropolitan area has formed a rail transportation system consisting of JR railway, private railway, subway, and other railways, with a total mileage of approximately 3500 kilometers.
It is noteworthy that in the past 50 years, the operating mileage of suburban railways in the Tokyo metropolitan area has only increased by 10%, but passenger capacity has tripled. The reason lies in the concept and form of hub design - Japan highly aggregates urban population through hub stations and integrates hubs into conventional urban buildings. Taking Shinjuku Station as an example, more than 10 rail lines converge here. The numerous entrances and exits of the station are directly connected to the surrounding shopping malls, office buildings, residential buildings, and public buildings through underground passages. Most passengers enter and exit the rail transit station through these dense entrances and transfer channels, resulting in high efficiency in getting on and off, as well as transferring.
Another new construction trend is the development of the transportation system in the Tokyo metropolitan area from a centralized and radial road network layout to a dispersed and circular pattern. Priority should be given to the construction of circular routes, which mainly serve to divert transit and bypass traffic, allocate traffic flow reasonably, improve traffic congestion in the central area, decentralize urban functions appropriately, and accelerate the development of intercity integration.
Living Across Regions in Germany
Fancy tickets improve efficiency
With the rapid development of multi standard rail transit systems in urban agglomerations, more and more rail transit construction projects have been rapidly and efficiently promoted through scientific and meticulous planning, design, and demonstration. The length of rail transit lines continues to extend, and the scale of the network gradually expands. Establishing a sound legal and regulatory system is the fundamental measure to achieve the healthy and sustainable development of rail transit. Countries with mature rail transit development in the world have relatively complete legal and regulatory systems in the field of rail transit.
For example, the German Local Transportation Financial Assistance Act allows the use of income tax on mineral oil to improve local transportation conditions; The German Railway Expansion Act sets out the expansion sequence and reconstruction rules for rail transit from a legislative perspective; The Urban Rail Transit Construction and Operation Rules provide detailed regulations on the construction, operation, safety, technical standards, and other aspects of urban rail transit. The legislative system formed by the above laws and regulations has achieved the legalization and standardization of various stages of German rail transit from investment to operation.
The urban space in Germany presents a typical urban agglomeration pattern, with a high degree of integration between urban transportation, intercity transportation, and cross regional long-distance transportation. Due to the widespread cross city living, working, going to school, and shopping among people living in urban agglomerations, they have a strong dependence on urban agglomerations and federal interstate rail transit. Therefore, the rail transit here strives for intensive and efficient use.
For example, the standards for urban rail transit are basically the same as those for national railways. In this way, urban rail transit such as intercity railways and subways and light rails can achieve line sharing, laying a hardware foundation for three-dimensional transfer. The three-dimensional transfer hub in Germany mainly relies on airports and central train stations in large cities. Here, intercity railways, suburban railways, subways, buses, and taxis intersect and connect.
In terms of operational services, transfers at German hubs are extremely convenient. Passengers can purchase their own tickets without a ticket checkpoint and randomly check their tickets when boarding. Train tickets are divided into two hour valid tickets, daily tickets, weekly tickets, monthly tickets, group tickets, etc. Setting up fancy train tickets eliminates the need for many people to buy tickets every time they take a ride, greatly improving the speed of passenger transfer, reducing passenger congestion, and improving the efficiency of intercity crowd flow.
In addition, as long as passengers buy tickets for bicycles, they can take them to rail transit carriages. Subways and trains have dedicated carriages with fewer seats and larger space for passengers carrying bicycles to ride. Passengers use rail transit between cities and bicycles within the city, seamlessly connecting.
Night train for tapping potential
Accelerate the integration of intercity industries
The planning and development of urban agglomerations guide the extension of intercity rail transit. The Paris region is one of the typical cases.
Before 1965, the development focus of Paris was on the urban area. In order to meet the growing demand for transportation, Paris vigorously developed urban rail transit, and from 1900 to 1965, 13 urban rail transit lines with a total length of 180 kilometers were opened and operated.
After 1965, Paris gradually realized that a single core structure was not conducive to further urban development, and thus proposed the "Guidelines for Land Development and Urban Planning in the Paris Region" to build five new cities in an area 20-30 kilometers away from the city center, achieving multi-core development of the city. To meet the passenger travel needs generated by the new city, the regional express railway RER line has emerged. Its emergence further connected the urban network and optimized the urban structure of the old city of Paris.
In the process of promoting the development of urban agglomerations, the integration of transportation with rail transit as the main body not only affects passenger flow, but also can tap into huge potential in freight transportation.
The Halifax Moncton Growth Corridor, which connects the two eastern provinces of Canada, is known as Canada's "Atlantic gateway". Twenty inter provincial industrial and commercial parks covering an area of 60 square kilometers are scattered within the urban agglomeration covered by this corridor. The convenient transportation infrastructure and logistics have become one of the key factors for the rapid economic growth in this region.
In fact, there are idle resources in the operation time and capacity of rail transit within urban agglomerations. The operating time of urban rail transit in general urban agglomerations is between 6:00-24:00 during the day and the first half of the night. Trains in the second half of the night are vacant and can be further utilized. Unlike road transportation, rail transit has relatively fixed departure and arrival times. Based on the analysis of operating time, it can scientifically plan the frequency, quantity, and time of logistics transportation, which can significantly improve the efficiency of logistics transportation.
Using rail transit as a medium to make logistics between cities efficient, fast, and direct, while promoting the improvement of transportation service quality, optimizing cost control by reducing warehousing pressure, is a favorable factor for economic integration, functional sharing, and industrial development between cities.
