The Role of High Speed Rail in Levelling-Up the Spatial Economy

HS2已成为政府“升级”空间经济的雄心的象征。高铁的粗略定义是实现与伦敦地区相似的经济增长和生活水平。但高铁对经济影响的评估存在广泛争议。这在一定程度上是因为用于评估铁路改进的主要工具不太适合新的高铁线路，这些线路通过大幅改善旅行时间和连通性来提供转型影响。这表明，可以用来为该计划提供见解的新的强有力的证据具有及时和影响的潜力。目前寻找新证据的领域之一与集聚效益有关--就业密集地区导致更高生产率的趋势。关于这一主题的大部分现有证据都集中在通勤者更容易到达的影响上，而不是城市间的连通性--这通常是高铁计划的主要驱动力。这项提议旨在产生研究，促进关于连接城市产生集聚影响的机制的学术研究，以及HS2阶段2b的潜在影响及其对提升空间经济的贡献。它将受益于我的两位主管在专业化领域的建议-Graham教授，一位领先的集聚专家，以及Vickerman教授，他专门研究英国和国外的高铁影响。

HS2 has become symbolic of the government's ambition to "level-up"the spatial economy. This is loosely defined as achieving economicgrowth and living standards that are similar to those of the London area.But the valuation of economic impacts from high speed rail (HSR) arewidely disputed. This is in part because the main tools for assessing railenhancements are poorly suited to new HSR lines that providetransformational impacts via dramatic improvements in journey timesand connectivity. This suggests that new robust evidence that can beused to provide insights into the scheme has the potential to be bothtimely and impactful.One of the areas where new evidence is currently sought relates toagglomeration benefits - the tendency for dense areas of employmentto lead to higher productivity. Much of the existing evidence on thistopic is focussed on impacts from better accessibility for commuters,rather than on intercity connectivity - which is typically the main driverfor HSR schemes.This proposal aims to produce research that advances the scholarshipon the mechanics through which connecting cities createsagglomeration impacts, and the potential impact of HS2 Phase 2b andits contribution to levelling-up the spatial economy. It will benefit fromadvice in the areas of specialisation of two of my supervisors -Professor Graham, a leading expert on agglomeration, and ProfessorVickerman, who specialises on the impacts of HSR in the UK andabroad.