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Accessibility and Network Changes of the Planned Budapest- Belgrade High-Speed Railway

Accessibility and Network Changes of the Planned Budapest- Belgrade High-Speed Railway

Proceedings of 7th Transport Research Arena TRA 2018, April 16-19, 2018, , Accessibility and Network Changes of the Planned - High-speed Railway

András Gulyás PhD a*, Áron Kovács PhD b

a associate professor, Faculty of Engineering and Informatics, of Pécs, b The Doctoral School of Earth Sciences of the University of Pécs, Hungary

Abstract

The development of the Budapest-Belgrade high-speed railway has been announced officially in autumn 2016. The railway link has a total length of 350 km, designed for a maximum speed of 200 km per hour. Enhancement of the railway connection is an important condition for achieving better mobility as well as promoting economic development of the regions concerned. There will be obvious changes in the Trans-European network connections and accessibility improvements will be achieved. In the current research the changes of a complex multimodal transport network indicator is assessed. The results indicate the positive changes in the competitive potential of the regions concerned as well as their role in the European co-operation. The other part of the research uses an enhanced accessibility function to characterize and compare multimodal regional and international connections, calculating the changes of the accessibility between some Central-European capitals proving competitiveness of high speed rail compared to other modes.

Keywords: high-speed rail; accessibility; transport network; regional planning.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +36203399942. E-mail address: [email protected] Gulyás and Kovács / TRA2018, Vienna, Austria, April 16-19, 2018

1. Introduction

The development of the Budapest-Belgrade high-speed railway has been announced officially in autumn 2016. The railway links Budapest and Belgrade, it has a total length of 350 km distributed almost equally between the countries involved. The planned dual-track line will be designed for electrified passenger and cargo trains with a maximum speed of 200 km per hour. The alignment mainly follows the existing single-track ordinary railway line. Enhancement of the railway connection is an important condition for achieving better mobility as well as promoting economic development in Hungarian and Serbian regions concerned. As a result of the planned Budapest-Belgrade high-speed railway there will be obvious changes in the Trans-European network connections and accessibility improvements will be achieved.

Formerly a complex multimodal transport network indicator (TRANS) has been utilized for comparison of regions of two neighbouring countries, an EU member state and a non-member state, Hungary and , presented at TRA by Gulyás and Kovács (2016). In the current research the authors intend to calculate the changes of this transport network indicator caused by the planned Budapest-Belgrade high-speed railway. The results indicate positive changes in the competitive potential of the regions concerned as well as their role in the European co- operation. Regional differences are measurable and evaluable by the help of TRANS-ratio (at all development levels), irrespectively of variable indexes and conditions. This ratio favours the evaluation of transport network development before its construction, for instance in the case of Budapest-Belgrade high-speed railway, which can be a rival of the motorway in the perspective of passenger and goods movements. The analysis presents the current and future effects of train network development, making comparable the territorial and transport capacities and highlighting interrelations between transport conditions and social relations.

Accessibility functions usually describe spatial distribution of activities and transport impedance. This part of the current research is based on the Austroads accessibility functions that have been worked out for urban networks and have been formerly enhanced by one of the authors dealing with rural road networks, presented at TRA by Gulyás (2014). The further enhanced multimodal accessibility function is able to characterise and compare multimodal regional and international connections. The authors intend to calculate the changes of the accessibility between some Central-European capitals (Belgrade, Budapest and Vienna) resulted by the planned Budapest- Belgrade high-speed railway proving competitiveness of high speed rail compared to other modes. The potential for further development of the high-speed railway line towards and providing even better Trans- European network connections will be analysed finally.

2. The role of high-speed railways in regional development

The is committed to expansion of the European high speed rail network in order to improve mobility and connectivity. Potential options categorised by Civity Management Consultants (2013) include  new very high speed rail lines with design speeds at or above 300 km/h,  new medium high speed rail lines with design speeds at 250 - 280 km/h,  development of conventional lines typically at 200 - 220 km/h.

According to the above mentioned study high speed rail may be competitive at distances between 300 km and 800 km. This statement is strengthened by Feigenbaum (2013) in a US assessment where “The evidence suggests that HSR can only be competitive on routes that are between 200 and 500 miles (322 and 805 km) in length”.

Development of a conventional line has less potential to achieve benefits that higher speed rail could generate. However, in situations where very or medium high speed rail designs prove to be not really efficient, conventional upgrades are capable of achieving better benefit-cost ratios as stated by Civity Management Consultants (2013).

Many authors have analysed benefits of a new high-speed railway line that are direct and indirect, the latter being for example the economic development of regions concerned for example Bayley (2012), Vickerman (2015), Wang and Charles (2010). Direct benefits are mainly time savings, higher reliability, comfort and safety while a special benefit that can be considered as both direct and indirect is the enhancement of the accessibility between the regions because of obvious changes in the modal split and travel times as explained by Ginés de Rus (2012). A comprehensive review on the methods and models for assessment of the regional impacts of high-speed rail has been provided by Chen and Silva (2011).

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3. The planned Budapest-Belgrade high-speed railway

There is a – – – – Vienna – Budapest Corridor in the Trans-European high-speed railway network development plans. As a continuation of this railway corridor, the planned Budapest-Belgrade high-speed railway provides better connection between Serbia and the EU countries. The development of the Budapest-Belgrade high-speed railway has been announced officially in autumn 2016 by cooperation between Hungary, Serbia and China. The railway linking Budapest and Belgrade, has a total length of 350 km distributed almost equally between the countries involved, 184 km in Serbia and 166 km in Hungary. The planned dual-track line will be designed for electrified passenger and cargo trains with a maximum speed of 200 km per hour. The alignment mainly follows the existing single-track ordinary railway line. Enhancement of the railway connection is an important condition for achieving better mobility as well as promoting economic development in Hungarian and Serbian regions concerned. As a result of the planned Budapest-Belgrade high-speed railway there will be obvious changes in the Trans-European network connections and accessibility improvements will be achieved. Figure 1 shows the schematic alignment of the planned high-speed railway line.

Fig. 1 The Budapest-Belgrade high-speed railway line

4. The changes of a complex multimodal transport network indicator

Formerly a complex multimodal transport network indicator (TRANS) has been utilized for comparison of regions of two neighbouring countries, an EU member state and a non-member state, Hungary and Serbia by Gulyás and Kovács (2016). The TRANS indicator originally developed by Veres (2004) and its ratio is capable for making a comparison between the development level of different transport systems and territorial differences from the point of view of transport can be analysed, which is the most important trait of the complex indicator. For the analysis the following variables were necessary (Table 1):

Table 1: Variables of the transport network indicator Name Variable

T Area (100 km2), N Population (1,000 capita). V Total length of rail network (km) VV Rate of electrified railway lines (%) U Total length of public roads (km) AU Rate of motorways from public road network (%) F Total length of water lines (km) R Total passenger traffic of (capita) TRANS18-13 Change in the TRANS indicator compared to 2013 (%)

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The TRANS indicator is primarily suitable for indicating the features and changes in infrastructure, and does not take into account social improvement due to development. The research is based on the annual national statistical yearbooks of 2012-2013 in terms of population, area size, air traffic, road and railway infrastructure, but we have relied on our own calculations in determining the ratio of electrified railway lines (VV) and the length of navigable waterways (F). These calculations were based on the constantly updated maps of Open Street† and the map editor Qgis 2.4.0.‡ In calculating the length of the waterways of a given region, rivers on borders (the and ) were taken as the endowment of both adjacent regions, while the periodic navigable routes were excluded.

The infrastructural development of the Belgrade-Budapest high-speed railway will only improve the infrastructure of some regions, because it affects only few regions: Budapest (16 km), Pest (34 km) and Bács-Kiskun (112 km) in Hungary, and North Bačka (62 km), South Bačka (64 km), Srem (35 km) and Belgrade (21 km) in Serbia. On the other hand, the social impact of this development will affect not only the regions of these two countries, but the other neighbouring regions and the accessibility of larger as well.

Variables were ensured by National Statistical and authors’ own measurement using open GIS software. From the figures of Table 2 is clearly visible that the items of regional transport systems are significantly different for instance the air transport traffic figures, where five-six-fold disparities are present.

Table 2: Transport infrastructure of regions affected by the development of the Budapest-Belgrade railway line Territorial unit T N V VV% U AU% F R Budapest (HU) 52.51 1735.71 180 98.9 90 48.9 39 85040 Pest (HU) 63.91 1218.81 574 71.9 2692 8.2 89 0 Bács-Kiskun (HU) 84.44 519.93 463 65.2 2252 3.4 154 0 South-Bačka (SR) 40.15 6153.71 158.9 79.4 1268 0.4 240 0 North-Bačka (SR) 17.84 1869.06 128.3 95.7 623 1.8 0 0 Srem (SR) 34.85 3122.78 124.9 95.2 1091 0.9 186 0 Belgrade (SR) 32.26 1659.44 297 93.6 5804 1.9 148 35400

In order to decrease the huge disparities variables were weighed by the help of Engel complex ratio based separately on their regional area and population. For instance for railways Equation 1 shows the method applied.

푉 푉퐾 = (1) (푇푁)0,5 where VK is the combined railway network ratio.

The calculated figures had to be normalized by the help of Bennett-method in order to easier evaluation and contraction. The process of normalization can be described by Equation 2.

푉퐾−푀퐼푁(푉퐾) 퐼푁퐷 (푉) = (2) 푀퐴푋(푉퐾)−푀퐼푁(푉퐾) where IND (V) is the normalized combined railway index, MAX (VK) is the maximum value (max) of the combined railway ratio in the analysed territories, MIN (VK) is the minimum value (min) of the combined railway ratio in the analysed territories.

Table 3 contains the Bennett-method based normalized transport indices calculated for 2018.

† Free maps were provided by http://download.geofabrik.de/europe/. ‡ The map editor is open access, downloadable from https://www.qgis.org/en/site/index.html

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Table 3. Bennett-method based normalized complex transport figures 2018 Territorial unit IND(V) IND (VV%) IND (U) IND (AU%) IND (F) IND (R) TRANS18-13% Budapest (HU) 0.3729 0.5657 0.3860 1.0000 0.9912 1.0000 1.7025 Pest (HU) 0.4164 0.1389 0.2748 0.0569 0.6667 0.0000 0.7453 Bács-Kiskun (HU) 0.4609 0.1680 0.3481 0.0316 0.8662 0.0000 3.5391 South-Bačka (SR) 0.1277 0.2773 0.2282 0.0048 1.0000 0.0000 9.3855 North-Bačka (SR) 0.4626 0.8986 0.3111 0.0611 0.0000 0.0000 34.8787 Srem (SR) 0.1743 0.6403 0.2986 0.0183 0.5238 0.0000 9.8772 Belgrade (SR) 0.2044 0.2216 0.7718 0.0163 0.9088 0.1722 0.7700

Even after the development of the Budapest-Belgrade high speed railway, the TRANS indicator shows a significant difference in the infrastructure development of transport in the two countries. In Hungary, the traffic performance indicator of Budapest remains in the catergory of extremely developed (the TRANS indicator is 0.418-0.498), while in Serbia, despite the development of the railway, it is not Belgrade (TRANS 0.383), but the region (0.465) which remains the most developed. It is only Belgrade in Serbia, and only Moson- County in Hungary, where we can find developed complex transport network indicators (TRANS value 0,338-0,447). The latter owes it to the proximity of the western border, and the new Vienna-Brno-Győr development pole (East- Central Development Axis). We can find a moderately developed value (TRANS value 0,257-0,337) in the vicinity of Budapest (Pest, Fejér and Bács-Kiskun counties). These counties form an economic agglomeration ring, which have also positively affected the development of transport infrastructure in these regions. In Serbia, regions with similar development levels are , and Pećina , and thanks to the Budapest- Belgrade railway development, South-Bačka, North-Bačka and Srem. These are the areas where multimodal transport is worthwhile, because poorly developed (TRANS 0,177-0,256) and underdeveloped (TRANS 0,096- 0,176) areas do not have the transport conditions and infrastructure necessary to collect and distribute goods, and for large international freight forwarders to set warehouses (Figure 2).

Fig. 2. The TRANS indicator following the development of the Budapest-Belgrade high speed railway

The development of the Budapest-Belgrade high speed railway will result in a great improvement in the affected regions of both countries. As Serbia is currently at a lower transport infrastructure level than Hungary, the

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development will bring about more apparent improvements in the affected Serbian regions (South Bačka, North Bačka, Srem and Belgrade) than in the Hungarian counties. used to have a number of railway junctions with significant railway traffic at the beginning of the 20th century, but after . the amended border cut the former Hungarian railway lines, so they became uneconomical and unsustainable, and got closed down one by one. Therefore, the construction of the high-speed railway connecting the two capitals may bring an important step forward in the cooperation between the two regions of North-Bačka and Bács-Kiskun as well. This prognosis is confirmed by the analysis, predicting that in Serbia, it is Northern Bačka (35.8%) and in Hungary, it is Bács- Kiskun (3.5%) where the greatest improvement can be expected in the infrastructure (Table 3, Figure 3). The development would add and to Belgrade, in the international rail freight and passenger traffic, affecting the economic and logistics bases of the entire province. It would increase the commutable distance between work and home. Bringing the network to a European level would have a positive effect on all sectors of tourism. As for Hungary, not only will it make the connection with Serbia faster and more direct, supporting the ‘Eastern Opening’ program, but it may also be the main route of Chinese goods from the Piraeus to .

Fig. 3 Change of the TRANS indicator compared to 2013 after the development of the Budapest-Belgrade high-speed railway

5. The changes in the accessibility

Accessibility is an important characteristic of transport networks describing the spatial potential of a territorial unit as advantage or disadvantage compared to other units defined by Tóth and Kincses (2007). Accessibility represents the availability of different opportunities for human activities by different transport modes. Accessibility measures the ease or difficulty of reaching spatial opportunities (job, education, services etc.) provided by land-use as stated in Litman (2010). People’s willingness to travel a given time differs from region to region: in some case, a certain trip would be considered long and would be avoided if possible while in other cases, it would be considered as a short trip based on the work of Levine et al. (2010).

There is a wide literature on accessibility and its metric types as well as calculation methods. An excellent summary is given by Geurs and Ritsema van Eck (2001) providing a typology of available accessibility measures distinguishing infrastructure-based, activity-based and utility-based measures. Recently a combination of accessibility measures has been formulated in order to take into account different types of measures. Combined accessibility metrics usually require two inputs as follows: distribution of opportunities by location and capacity

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on one side and characteristics of transport available to reach these opportunities on the other side, mathematically consisting of an activity function and an impedance function as mentioned by Ginés de Rus (2009).

In international transport connections accessibility is ensured by different transport modes mainly rail, road and air. In order to analyse the changes in accessibility the modified multimodal version of the accessibility metric proposed by Austroads (2011) has been used. The combined metric originally developed for urban transport network has got two components according to Espada and Luk (2011):  an impedance function that describes the degree of difficulty of reaching the destination by transport,  a saturation function, that takes into account the weighted available opportunities.

In a former research another modified version of the Austroads accessibility metric had been used for assessment of micro-regional transport network connections by Gulyás (2014). The current research has developed a modified multimodal accessibility metric suitable for assessing international transport connections. The modification mainly concerns the saturation function where available opportunities have been substituted by different available transport modes. Weighing the individually calculated impedances of transport modes the accessibility metric of a given relation, for example between two capitals, can be determined.

The impedance function depending on travel time is described as Equation 3. The multiplier at the end of the equation ensures that the function value is 1 if travel time is 0:

eb(T a) 1 eab d(T)  (3) 1 eb(T a) eab where d(T) is impedance function of travel time, T is travel time and a, b are parameters.

Parameters have been chosen to represent the larger distances and longer travel times. In case of assessment of transport connections between capitals the proposed parameter values of the impedance function are: a=200 and b=0.015. Figure 4 shows the impedance function used.

Fig. 4 Impedance function

The accessibility metric is equal to the modified saturation function described as Equations (4) and (5):

k  w jd (Ti , j ) 1 e j s(.)  (4) k  w jd (Ti, j ) 1 e j

  A  s w d(T ) (5) i  j i, j   j 

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where Ai is accessibility of settlement i, s(.) is saturation function, wj is weight of service and centre type, d(.) is impedance function of travel time, Ti,j is travel time from settlement i to service type or centre j and k is a parameter.

In case of assessment of international transport connections the proposed parameter value of the saturation function is k=0,4. Table 4 shows weights of transport modes analysed, the proposed weights for impedance function have been derived from opinions of experts. The sum of weights is 11 providing an accessibility value of 0,975. There is a small part to 1 representing other special transport modes (private air, bicycle, river boat) not considered here.

Table 4. Proposed weights for impedance function. Railway Road Air Total Weight 5 4 2 11

Figure 5 shows the saturation function.

Fig. 5 Saturation function

The aim of the analysis of impacts of the planned Budapest-Belgrade high-speed railway is to quantify the change and enhancement of the accessibility between capitals compared to the current situation. Travel time data describing the present conditions have been taken from timetables in case of rail and air while in case of road the data source was the viamichelin.com route planner. Air connection time was modified by a 60 min check-in time.

The design speed of the planned 350 km long high-speed railway line is 200 km/h, the realistic travel time taken into account is 70% of the possible maximum because of the speed yield that is the ratio of the effective travel speed to the design speed. When comparing current and future situations only the rail travel time has been changed.

Calculations include two relations between capitals: Belgrade-Budapest and Belgrade-Vienna. Table 5 presents current and future travel times. Table 6 contains current and future accessibility metrics. Table 7 shows the resulted changes in accessibility.

Table 5. Current and future travel times. Relation Railway Road Air Current (s) Belgrade-Budapest 480 250 105 Belgrade-Vienna 720 410 150 Future (s) Belgrade-Budapest 150 250 105 Belgrade-Vienna 300 410 150

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Table 6. Current and future accessibility. Relation Railway Road Air Weighted Accessibility Current Belgrade-Budapest 0,015 0,337 0,846 3,115 0,55 Belgrade-Vienna 0,0004 0,043 0,713 1,600 0,31 Future Belgrade-Budapest 0,713 0,337 0,846 6,605 0,87 Belgrade-Vienna 0,192 0,043 0,713 2,558 0,47

Table 7. Changes in accessibility. Accessibility Current Future Enhancement Enhancement % Belgrade-Budapest 0,55 0,87 0,32 58 % Belgrade-Vienna 0,31 0,47 0,16 52 %

As a consequence of the calculation results it can be stated that the implementation of the high-speed railway will provide a considerable enhancement of accessibility especially in the relation Belgrade-Budapest. The value of the complex accessibility metric where other transport modes are taken into account as well increases from 0,55 to 0,87 that means an improvement of 0,32 (58%). A little bit less is the improvement in the relation Belgrade-Vienna, namely 0,16 (52%). A further lengthening of the high-speed railway into the southern direction would enhance the accessibility of other inter capital relations in the greater region.

6. The future network development possibilities

The high-speed railway future network development aims to connect Greece and its marine where the largest quantities of goods arrive from the Middle East and China. According to China’s strategy, goods from the eastern part of the country will generally be shipped to the Greek ports and then transported on to Western Europe from there partially by the extended high-speed railway. There is another potential for further development of the Budapest-Belgrade high-speed railway line towards the Bulgarian capital providing better Trans-European network connections and better accessibility towards the Balkan Regions.

7. Conclusions

The planned Budapest-Belgrade high-speed railway has a potential positive impact on mobility and regional development. The results of the current research indicate the changes in the competitive potential of the regions concerned as well as their role in the European co-operation. The complex multimodal transport network indicator in the regions analysed shows an improvement of 13,7% on average in case of the affected regions in Serbia, which mainly means Vojvodina (South-Bačka, North-Bačka, Srem), while in Hungary, the improvement is almost 2% on average, of which Bács-Kiskun county is most prominent, being along the border. Changes in accessibility between Central-European capitals Belgrade – Budapest and Belgrade – Vienna show a considerable enhancement of 58% and 52%, respectively, that proves the competitiveness of high speed rail compared to other modes. Railway development would contribute to closer business and private connections across the border, and it would make it possible for both countries to participate in the development of a new Silk Road, that is, the faster delivery of Chinese goods to Western Europe.

References

Austroads, 2011. Application of Accessibility Measures. Austroads Publication AP–R397-11, Sydney. Bayley, M., 2012. Regional development via high-speed rail: a study of the -Mälaren region and possibilities for Melbourne-regional Victoria. Master thesis. Division of Transportation and Logistics KTH Railway Group. Chen, G., Silva, J.A., 2011. The regional impacts of high-speed rail. A review of methods and models. Association for European Transport and Contributors. European Transport Conference, . http://abstracts.aetransport.org/paper/download/id/3671 Civity Management Consultants. 2013. Further Development of the European High Speed Rail Network. / . Espada, I., Luk, J., 2011. Development of an Accessibility Metric and Its Application to Melbourne. Road & Transport Research: A Journal of Australian and New Zealand Research and Practice, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 55-66. Feigenbaum, B., 2013. High-Speed Rail in Europe and Asia: Lessons for the United States. Reason Foundation. http://reason.org/files/high_speed_rail_lessons.pdf Geurs KT., Ritsema van Eck JR., 2001. Accessibility measures: review and applications. Evaluation of accessibility impacts of land-use transportation scenarios, and related social and economic impact. RIVM report no. 408505 006.

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Ginés de Rus (ed.). 2009. Economic Analysis of High Speed Rail in Europe. Fundación BBVA, Bilbao. http://www.fbbva.es/TLFU/dat/inf_web_economic_analysis.pdf Ginés de Rus, 2012. Economic evaluation of the High Speed Rail. de G.C., . http://docplayer.net/30163775-Economic-evaluation-of-the-high-speed-rail.html Gulyás, A., 2014. Proposal for a new accessibility metric taking into account road condition. Transport Research Arena, Paris. Gulyás, A., Kovács, Á., 2016. Assessment of transport connections based on accessibility. Transport Research Arena, . Levine, J., Grengs, J., Chen, W., Enos, J., Shen, Q., Kostyniuk, L., 2010. Youth, Age, and Transportation Accessibility: An Intermetropolitan Comparison. Michigan Center for Advancing Safe Transportation Throughout the Lifespan, Report No. M-CASTL 2010-03. Litman, T., 2010. Evaluating accessibility for transportation planning. Technical report, Victoria Transport Policy Institute. Tóth G., Kincses Á., 2007. Elérhetőségi modellek. (Models for accessibility) Tér és Társadalom (Space and Society) Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 51- 87. (in Hungarian) Veres L., 2004. Közlekedési rendszerek a regionális fejlesztési stratégiában. (Transport systems in the regional development strategy) Magyar Közlekedési Központ (Hungarian Transport Centre) Budapest. (in Hungarian) Vickerman, P., 2015. High-speed rail and regional development: the case of intermediate stations. Journal of Transport Geography, Vol. 42. pp. 157-165. Wang, J., Charles, M.B., 2010. The potential impacts of high speed rail on regional Economic development in Australia: towards a multi- regional input-output approach', paper presented to the 7th World Congress on High Speed Rail, .

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