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Belgeo Revue belge de géographie
3 | 2016 High-speed rail and the city: urban dynamics and tourism
Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/17451 DOI: 10.4000/belgeo.17451 ISSN: 2294-9135
Publisher: National Committee of Geography of Belgium, Société Royale Belge de Géographie
Electronic reference Belgeo, 3 | 2016, « High-speed rail and the city: urban dynamics and tourism » [Online], Online since 30 September 2016, connection on 17 October 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/ 17451 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/belgeo.17451
This text was automatically generated on 17 October 2020.
Belgeo est mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Editorial: Thinking beyond the cost-benefit analysis: the wider impact of high-speed rail on local development Marie Delaplace and Frédéric Dobruszkes
The high-speed rail project as an urban redevelopment tool The cases of Zaragoza and Valladolid Carmen Bellet Sanfeliu and Luis Santos Ganges
City planning related to the completion of the new high speed line in Rennes, Brittany The unexpected competition between central projects and peripheral private investments Romaric Nègre and Guy Baudelle
“Give me a high-speed rail station, or nothing!” How private stakeholders consider investing in the high-speed rail station’s area in shrinking cities The case of Saint-Étienne (France) Aurélie Delage
Measuring the influence of the Camp de Tarragona high-speed rail station on first-time and repeat tourists visiting a coastal destination Òscar Saladié, Salvador Anton Clavé and Aaron Gutiérrez
Does high-speed rail affect destination choice for tourism purpose? Disneyland Paris and Futuroscope case studies Marie Delaplace, Francesca Pagliara and Andrea La Pietra
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Editorial: Thinking beyond the cost- benefit analysis: the wider impact of high-speed rail on local development
Marie Delaplace and Frédéric Dobruszkes
1 This special issue is one of two published following the conference “High-speed rail and the city”, held at the Paris-Est University in January 2015. The other has been published in Open Transportation Journal, 2016, Volume 101. No fewer than 60 researchers from ten different countries discussed nearly 30 papers related to the two main themes, namely “High-speed rail and urban dynamics” and “High-speed rail and tourism”.
2 This conference was the culmination of a European research process organised by the research group, “City, Transport, Tourism and Territory”, which was supported by the Paris-Est University’s “Urban Futures” Labex (“Laboratoire d’excellence”). This scientific work was undertaken during a series of international workshops held in Paris, Naples, and Toledo in 2013 and 2014. More than 20 researchers from the Alicante, Brussels (ULB), Castilla la Mancha, Lleida, Rovira y Virgili, Naples, and Paris-Est universities took part in these fruitful workshops. As guest editors of this issue, we would like to warmly thank the “Urban Futures” Labex for its support.
The significant but contested development of high- speed rail
3 Since the seminal “Tokaido Shinkansen” opened in 1964, connecting Tokyo and Osaka at 210 kph (before subsequent improvements allowed higher speeds), high-speed rail (HSR) has expanded increasingly, especially across East and Southeast Asia and Western Europe. Considering at least 250 kph (a threshold today commonly accepted to define high-speed rail), one counts nearly 29,000 km of high-speed lines (HSLs) across 13 countries in early 2016 (Figure 1), with 15,000 km more being constructed and
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thousands of extra km “planned” at a longer, thus uncertain term2. Furthermore, in several European countries including France, Germany, and Italy, high-speed trains (HSTs) can also ride on incumbent, traditional tracks, indicating an actual space of operations much larger than suggested by the geography of the sole HSLs.
Figure 1. High-speed rail countries (2016).
Only lines operating at 250 kph minimum have been considered.
4 However, HSR does not have unanimous support from both scholars and policymakers (see Albalate and Bel, 2017, for a recent example). As we already noted some years ago:
5 “High-speed rail is a controversial issue (i.e., in political circles, on public, television, etc.) and so is the financing of transport facilities in countries as diverse as France, the UK or the US. The public debate was (and still is) quite lively in the UK and has fed on experts’ reports and soundly-argued second opinions. HSR is also the subject of lively academic discussions as shown by a recent series of viewpoints published by the Journal of Transport Geography (Goetz, 2012) ‘Should we build HSLs?’” (Delaplace and Dobruszkes, 2013).
6 It is clear that this statement is even more valid today. Projects in countries as diverse as the UK, USA, Morocco, Australia and France have been (or are being) criticised.
7 The reasons for contesting HSR projects are diverse. Of course, there are local protests induced by the impact of new infrastructures in terms of noise, visual intrusion and land use. But most criticisms concern the very principle of building HSLs. The key point is that, since very few projects are financially profitable, public expenditures are required in most cases. This involves three different types of criticism. First, it irritates many observers, who by principle are against public spending, especially in Anglo- Saxon countries. Second, it is often argued that the whole community would be wiser to apply similar levels of public expenditures on modernising (longer parts of) traditional railways or on urban public transportation instead of on HSR (e.g., Overman, 2011). A
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related issue, too rarely pointed out, is that, on average, HSTs are overused by travellers belonging to higher social and occupational groups. In France, for instance, higher social-occupational groups account for 37% of the Mediterranean HSR and for 46% of the Northern HSR, compared to 8% of the whole population (Conseil général de l’environnement et du développement durable, 2008). This is notably a consequence of premium fares, which may account for a significant share of average monthly income. In France, for instance, a Paris-Marseilles return ticket may cost up to 18% of the 2013 per capita median net salary (Delaplace and Dobruszkes, 2015). This is arguably even truer in emerging countries. Thus, a Beijing-Shanghai return is priced at about RMB 1,100 or EUR 147. Considering the purchasing power parity between China and Belgium, this actually converts to no less than EUR 642. As a result, some have argued that public spending on HSR simply means that taxpayers pay for the mobility of the richer3.
8 But the very widespread criticism against HSR is the expected negative balance between costs and benefits. Considering financial terms only, most HSRs are simply not profitable, because very high traffic density is required to counterbalance high infrastructure costs. For instance, Betancor and Llobet (2017) note that, in Spain, virtually no HSR project is self-supporting, including the trunk line between Madrid and Barcelona (even though one could argue that the annual cost spread over 50 years is actually not so large). Of course, social costs and benefits are also considered. But most authors agree that even considering social costs and benefits – instead of financial terms only – still leads to the conclusion that high traffic density is needed to deliver a positive benefit-cost ratio.
The weaknesses of cost-benefit analyses to assess HSR projects
9 However, it is worth noting that the use of social cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to assess HSR projects is, by nature, an unstable and partial exercise. A CBA is unstable (i.e. not robust) because its results are strongly affected by the underlying hypotheses related to traffic and to the valuation of costs and benefits. It is well known that forecasts for rail projects are widely wrong, as they tend to overestimate the traffic and underestimate the financial cost (Flyvbjerg et al., 2005; Bonnafous, 2014). Table 1 gives some examples of error magnitude. Such wrong estimates are really problematic, considering that traffic density is a key factor of HSR financial and social profitability. In addition, ex post figures on HSR ridership suggest that, in many cases, not many passengers have actually been transferred from planes and cars, involving limited environmental gains (Givoni and Dobruszkes, 2013).
Observed HSR Study year Forecast passengers Difference passengers
Taiwan (daily) < 1997 200,000 35,000 – 50,000 (2007) –83% to –75%
84,000 – 90,000 (2008) –58% to –45%
Cross-Channel (Eurostar) 1998 25m in 2006 9.7m en 2011 –61%
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France’s TGV Nord 1990s 10.9m in 1993 6.4m en 2002 –41%
10 But even supposing that experts hold robust estimates of expected traffic and investment costs, a CBA remains unstable because of all the hypotheses proposed about the alleged monetary value of social costs and benefits, including impacts on landscapes, time saved, decrease in accidents, and decrease in the emission of GHG and of pollutants. To cite but one example, a critical review of the British HS2 project by Castles and Parish (2011) has suggested that its benefit-cost ratio (BCR) may decrease from 1.6 (according to the government) to only 0.5 if four crucial parameters are revised (namely: traffic forecast, saturation of existing lines into the base case, time value, and the project’s operating life). Only lowering the value of time (supposing that travel time penalises business passengers less than before, because laptops and ICTs make it possible to work on board) would reduce the BCR from 1.6 to 1.2. In this context, manipulating the conclusions of a CBA seems easy.
11 The second main issue raised by CBAs includes all of the impacts that are disregarded because they cannot be reasonably forecast and/or valued. These especially concern the potential indirect, wider impacts of HSR on the local economy, including the boost of tourism, establishment of new firms, establishment of companies, property value gains, new offices around rail stations, and changes in the social patterns of stations’ neighbourhoods, that are significantly expected by private and public stakeholders promoting HSR. The latter also expect symbolic impacts in terms of the image of the city. HSR would contribute to bring places served into the modern era. Political plays and issues and the need to be modern are thus significant factors in understanding what happens locally as a result of HSR.
12 In previous research, we have suggested applying service innovation theories to transportation (Delaplace, 2012; 2016). HSR services can be analysed as a set of innovations related to stations, trains, services (access to new services and to new functionalities), and even sometimes the rail station’s neighbourhood or the whole city through its new image. This set of innovation varies from country to country and from city to city because of technical, economic, institutional, social, and cultural aspects. It also varies due to the fact that public authorities conduct policies (communication, land planning, urban transport, etc.) to accommodate HSR in cities. These policies take place before, at the time of, or sometimes also after the launch of HSR services. Finally, the fact that such innovation exists does not necessarily involve effects. Indeed, these innovations need to be used and even be appropriated by private companies and inhabitants. The former can appropriate the innovations through market strategy, location strategy, career mobility, etc., and the latter can appropriate them through tourism-purposed mobility, commuting, and residential mobility. Hence, we know that tourism mobilities are very country- and culture-specific.
13 As a result, HSR cannot be considered as inducing mechanical/automatic effects on a city or a territory. The potential effect is co-produced in space and time by the various (public and private) actors, including the travellers. As written by Loukaitou-Sideris et al. (2013, p. 630):
14 “HSR’s effect on economic and urban development can be characterized as analogous to a fertilizer’s effect on crop growth: it is one ingredient that could stimulate economic growth, but other ingredients must also be present.” As a result, it is necessary to
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investigate local patterns and relationships between stakeholders to understand the potential impacts of the HSR.
15 We understand from this discussion that issues are more complex than the simplified universe in which CBAs are most often designed.
Contents of this special issue
16 Thinking beyond the usual terms of CBAs is the common approach of papers published in this special issue. Papers gathered also have in common a focus on case studies related to Spain and France; that is, the two European countries with the largest HSR networks. Three papers are concerned with public action (Bellet Sanfeliu and Santos Ganges; Nègre and Baudelle; Delage), while the two following works investigate individual decisions through surveys among HSR travellers (Saladié, Anto Clavé, and Gutiérrez; Delaplace, Pagliara, and La Pietra).
17 Carmen Bellet Sanfeliu and Luis Santos Ganges explore the case of Saragossa and Valladolid, two medium-sized Spanish cities served by HSR since 2003 and 2007, respectively. They show how HSR has provided an opportunity to rethink the whole railway system within the city and, above all, to plan urban projects based on property developments. These projects were designed during a time of economic expansion that occurred over the 1990s and 2000s and that was notably based on a property boom. The major crisis beginning in 2008 suddenly halted these projects. Developers thus could not collect the expected revenues that had made projects feasible. In the end, if HSR has contributed to the main urban projects, the expected impacts have not been seen. In a period of economic downturn, a support policy is not enough to make projects successful.
18 Romaric Nègre and Guy Baudelle analyse the Bretagne-Pays de la Loire high-speed line (BPL HSL) being constructed between Le Mans and Rennes, France, as an extension of the existing Paris – Le Mans HSL4. The line would open in 2017. In the context of Rennes’ metropolitanisation process, ambitious urban projects have also been set up. The authors highlight the specific nature of the metropolitanisation context in which HSR is embedded to better understand the projects led. But they also highlight that beyond support public policies that aim to take advantage of HSR, the economic situation is again essential. It is too early to assess the impacts, but the paper suggests that, in an adverse economic context, even proactive public policies are not enough.
19 The first series of papers ends with Aurélie Delage’s investigation of the recent regeneration process around Saint-Etienne’s Châteaucreux rail station, France. The city has been served by HSR5 since as early as 1981, but in the 1980s, very few projects have been designed considering the context of a shrinking city (the city has lost more than 40,000 inhabitants between 1968 and 1999). However, since the 2000s, the rail station has been reconsidered as an opportunity to base economic renewal on the local public authorities’ perspective and as “an all-risk insurance” for private stakeholders. Well beyond supply-related considerations – e.g., only four daily HSR services to Paris – the station has consciously been used as a core element to modernise the city with the support of renowned architects. While local developers may play a core role in certain cities in making projects realities (e.g., in Reims, see Bazin et al., 2016), it is found that, in the case of Saint-Etienne, external developers have played such a role. Again, only a
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detailed knowledge of local processes is needed to understand the potential advent of impacts.
20 The two following papers are interested in tourism as a business that can be stimulated by HSR. Both use quantitative methods based on a survey conducted among HSR users (Saladié et al.) or among two theme parks visitors (Delaplace et al.). They shed a light on users’ behaviours that have received too little attention until now.
21 Oscar Saladié, Salvador Anton Clavé et Aaron Gutiérrez surveyed 1,225 HSR travellers at the Camp de Tarragona HSR station (14 km away from Tarragona city and 17 km away from Reus, Spain) and considered a causal approach. They find that the HSR station increases the probability to visit Costa Daurada by 24% for tourists that had never been there before and by 13% for the repeaters. This confirms that HSR can stimulate tourism, but on the other hand, HSR accounts for only 3% of tourists visiting this resort. This suggests that tourism is not enough to justify the expensive investment in HSR infrastructure.
22 Finally, Marie Delaplace, Francesca Pagliara, and Andrea La Pietra analyse the impact of HSR in tourists’ destination choice considering two theme parks, namely the Futuroscope close to Poitiers and Disneyland Paris in Marne-la-Vallée, France. Both are located near an HSR station. Again, the results show that the territorial context is key to understand the relationships between HSR and economic development, including tourism. Indeed, while regression techniques show that tourists would have not visited Disneyland Paris without HSR, this is not the case for Futuroscope, where HSR users are much fewer (14% compared to 46% for Disneyland). Results also show that HSR does not affect the spatial diffusion of tourists around theme parks. At Disneyland, diffusion occurs towards Paris thanks to the regional express rail network (RER). In contrast, from Futuroscope diffusion occurs by car, and in a larger space within Poitou-Charente region, especially towards the cities of La Rochelle and Poitiers.
23 All in all, the papers gathered show the extent to which relationships between HSR and local dynamics are context-related and, notwithstanding the characteristics of the HSR supply, deeply related to territorial contexts, to local public policies, to the economic context, to behaviours, and to users’ attributes. Of course, these five papers do not exhaust the topic. We think it is necessary to compare these results with other cases to cover more local and national contexts. The results of the existing CBAs would probably not be reversed, but this at least makes it possible to set up the foundations for multi- criteria analyses. Finally, we hope that this paper will arouse similar research in countries with recent HSR development, especially in China but also in other developing/emerging countries.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ALBALATE D., BEL G. (eds.) (2017), Evaluating high-speed rail: Interdisciplinary perspectives, Abington & New York, Routledge.
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BAZIN S., BECKERICH C. & DELAPLACE M. (2016), “High-speed rail, corporate real estate and firm location: the results from two surveys (2008; 2014) in Reims”, Open transportation journal, 10, pp. 7-21.
BETANCOR O., LLOBET G. (2017), “Financial and social profitability of HSR in Spain”, in ALBALATE D., BEL G. (eds.), Evaluating High-Speed Rail: Interdisciplinary perspectives, Abington & New York, Routledge, pp. 23-45.
BONNAFOUS A. (2014), “Permanent Observatories as Tools for Ex-Post Assessment: The French Case Study”, ITF-OECD Discussion Paper, 10, Paris, International Transport Forum.
CASTLES C., PARISH D. (2011), Review of the Economic Case for HS2 Economic evaluation London – West Midlands link, London, RAC Foundation.
CONSEIL GÉNÉRAL DE L’ENVIRONNEMENT ET DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DURABLE (2008), Rapport sur les bilans LOTI : - de la LGV Rhône-Alpes ; - de la LGV Méditerranée ; - des gares nouvelles des LGV Rhône- Alpes et Méditerranée, doc no. 005448-01.
DELAPLACE M. (2012), « Pourquoi les ‘effets’ TGV sont-ils différents selon les territoires ? L’hétérogénéité au cœur du triptyque ‘Innovations, Territoires et Stratégies’ », Recherche Transports et Sécurité, 28, pp. 290-302.
DELAPLACE M. (2016), « Grande vitesse ferroviaire et développement local dans des contextes institutionnels différents : la nécessité de spatialiser les analyses de l’innovation de services », Le Forum de l’Innovation VII, 20 ans d’Innovations, Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, Paris, 9-11/6/2016.
DELAPLACE M., DOBRUSZKES F. (2013), “Analysing the relationship between high-speed rail and territories: a scientific field still in-progress”, Introduction to special issue, Recherche Transports et Sécurité, 29, pp. 155-160.
DELAPLACE M., DOBRUSZKES F. (2015), “From low-cost airlines to low-cost high-speed rail? The French case”, Transport Policy, 38, pp. 73-85.
FLYVBJERG B., SKAMRIS HOLM M. & BUHL S. (2005), “How (in)accurate are demand forecasts for public works projects? The case of transportation”, Journal of the American Planning Association, 71, 2, pp. 131-146.
GIVONI M., DOBRUSZKES F. (2013), “A review of ex-post evidence for mode substitution and induced demand following the introduction of High-Speed Rail”, Transport Reviews 33, 6, pp. 720-742.
GOETZ A. (2012), “Guest editorial: Introduction to the Special Section on rail transit systems and high speed rail”, Journal of Transport Geography, 22, pp. 219-220.
LOUKAITOU-SIDERIS A., HIGGINS H., PIVEN M. & WEI W. (2013), “Tracks to Change or Mixed Signals? A Review of the Anglo-Saxon Literature on the Economic and Spatial Impacts of High- Speed Rail”, Transport Reviews: A Transnational Transdisciplinary Journal, 33, 6, pp. 617-633.
OVERMAN H. (2011), “HS2: assessing the costs and benefits”, CentrePiece Winter, 2011/12, pp. 18-20.
UIC (2016), High-Speed lines in the World, Paris, UIC High-speed Department, Updated 1st January 2016.
NOTES
1. See http://benthamopen.com/TOTJ/VOLUME/10/
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2. Computations made by the authors based on UIC (2016). Lines under 250 kph have been excluded. 3. For instance, Henry Overman’s contribution to The Case for High-speed Rail: A regional, social and economic perspective, Parliamentary Seminar, London, Westminster Palace, 1st February 2012. 4. Rennes is already served by a high-speed train but riding on a traditional track from/to Le Mans. 5. Through a traditional track extending the Paris – Lyon HSR.
AUTHORS
MARIE DELAPLACE Université de Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée - Lab’Urba, Ecole d’Urbanisme de Paris, [email protected]
FRÉDÉRIC DOBRUSZKES Université libre de Bruxelles – Facultés des Sciences – DGES-IGEAT, [email protected]
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The high-speed rail project as an urban redevelopment tool The cases of Zaragoza and Valladolid Le projet de ligne à grande vitesse comme un instrument de réaménagement urbain. Les cas de Saragosse et Valladolid
Carmen Bellet Sanfeliu and Luis Santos Ganges
This research was financed by the Spanish Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad – Subdirección General de Proyectos de Investigación: Patrones de transformación urbana y estrategias asociadas a la alta velocidad ferroviaria en España (URBATAV) - CSO2012-34629.
Introduction
1 The construction of new railway infrastructure tends to go hand-in-hand with significant urban (re)development projects at a local scale (Bruinsma & al., 2008; Van den Berg and Pol, 1998; Roth and Polino, 2003). The reorganisation of the railway system following the arrival of high-speed rail (HSR) offers opportunities to improve the integration of railway spaces within the existing urban environment and to palliate the barrier effects associated with the earlier introduction of many traditional railway installations by urban growth (Bellet and Gutiérrez, 2011; Santos, 2007). However, in many cases, the arrival of the high-speed train (HST) has also been used as an excuse to embark upon important development projects around stations which, in some cases, have involved former railway land (Bertolini and Spit, 1998).
2 In Spain, several city councils have taken advantage of the arrival of HSR to rethink the whole local railway system. These rail transformations have caused major changes to the physical urban environment and have also been accompanied by property development projects that were initially planned during a period of economic expansion associated with a boom in the property cycle (2003-2008). Those have fuelled both rail infrastructure and urban development projects (Gaja, 2008; Rullán, 2011). In some Spanish cities, the introduction of HSR has also been accompanied by specific
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issues relating to the conception and the management of these projects and associated governance issues : • The new railway infrastructure goes beyond the simple introduction of new rail projects. In fact project has focus on maximalist infrastructural interventions whose main aim is to eliminate the barrier effect associated with the traditional railway system. In the majority of cases, the introduction of HSR also implies a complete remodelling of the existing railway system, which constitutes an original solution within the wider European context. Furthermore, from the technical point of view, it offers a powerful argument for designing a large and ambitious project associated with urban renewal and development. • The larger rail and associated urban development/renewal projects have mainly been managed by the public sector and involved all the levels of public administration plus the Spanish rail administrator (ADIF) and Spain’s national rail operator (RENFE). The option that was chosen over other alternatives based on public law (including special offices, consortia, agencies, private foundations based on public initiatives) moved this public service into the domain of private law (Santos, 2013). • A third specific characteristic of Spanish cases lies in the way that all of these rail and urban interventions were supposed to be financed. They were all designed to be “self-financed” projects, in which the profits from associated urban development and redevelopment (including real-estate income) projects would cover all of the costs of these ambitious railway and urban interventions.
3 The combination of these factors has resulted in some of the most ambitious urban renewal and redevelopment projects ever planned in Spanish cities (Bellet and Gutiérrez, 2011). This is particularly evident in the cases of two large intermediate cities: Zaragoza, on the Madrid-Barcelona-French border HSR line, where the new train service arrived in October 2003; and Valladolid, on the northwest HSR line, which received the HSR service in December 2007. Both cities are medium-sized agglomerations of the Iberian Peninsula and interior capitals of their respective region, situated between Madrid and the northern zone of the country.
4 In both cases, the project for the implementation of the new railway infrastructure led to a major transformation of the railway system within the city. This has also been used as an argument in favour of carrying out large, ambitious, urban development projects. In this paper, we have undertaken a comparative analysis of the two cases highlighted, focusing on: railway and urban transformations associated with the arrival of HSR; the coherence of these transformations with respect to existing territorial and strategic planning; the management of rail and urban projects; and the current level of execution of the plans originally presented.
5 The case analysis has been developed on the basis of several different hypotheses: • From an operational viewpoint, the fact that this kind of limited company corporation has managed these macro-scale urban development projects has, at the same time, been an innovative experience in urban management and a source of problems in Spain; • Self-financing is a poor principle and one that undermines urban planning; • The definition of new areas of centrality and urban development projects are not strategic aspects in themselves, but rather a consequence of the maximalist railway interventions to solve the problem of barrier effects.
6 The two case studies chosen describe the current state of these projects within the present context of a serious financial and economic crisis, identifying a series of issues that could equally apply to other examples in Spain. Our main sources have been: an
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analysis of urban planning documentation (Master Plans and specific development plans for areas around railway stations); a historical analysis of local press articles; and a number of in-depth interviews with local government staff and people responsible from urban planning in the corresponding local administrations.
The arrival of HSR as a key component of urban projects
7 The introduction of new infrastructure inevitably has a spatial impact on the local territory. This is even more pronounced when it involves the incorporation of a piece of transport infrastructure because, in addition to the changes generated by its very construction, this also implies substantial modifications to spatial accessibility. These transformations are all the more important when the transport infrastructure in question needs to be integrated into a more or less consolidated urban environment. As a result, studies of the introduction of HSR services in cities tend to focus on a very specific scale: the station and the neighbourhood in which it is located, whether these are of relatively new creation or have been generated by urban renewal (Bruinsma & al., 2008, Van den Berg & Pol, 1998).
8 In some cases, urban planners can take advantage of this remodelling to move railway installations that had previously been trapped within the urban fabric (such as technical and freight facilities and railway repair workshops) out to the edge of the city. Such actions free centrally located land which can then be used for urban re- development projects associated with the new-found centrality (Bruinsma & al., 2008; Santos, 2011). Urban projects associated with HSR stations in Europe could also be analysed using the same logic that has been applied to other iconic interventions associated with neoliberal urbanism (Thornley & Newman, 2011). In this context, railway stations have emerged as key sites for property-led capital accumulation and as engines for local development strategies (Peters & Novy, 2012). However, for many European cities, the arrival of HSR has formed part of an urban development project that has not only been capable of transforming the areas around stations (and the stations themselves) but also of leaving its mark on the wider structure of the city (Loukaitou-Sideris & al., 2012). In this way, new HSR services can produce local-scale urban development projects which are capable of modifying not only station areas but also the physical and functional structure of the whole urban area (Bellet and Gutiérrez, 2011; Peters, 2009). Indeed, in several Spanish cities, high-speed rail has been used as an argument in favour of modernity, serving as an excuse for the construction of new railway systems and new stations.
9 Although the introduction of HSR infrastructure in Spanish cities has opened the way for major urban transformations and redevelopment projects, it is still difficult to qualify the integration of the railway within Spanish cities as satisfactory (Santos, 2007). Urban decay in station neighbourhoods, tracks and infrastructure trapped within the urban fabric and that act as barriers, and railway spaces that lack functionality are all frequent features of Spanish city-centres. Historically speaking, urban planning and railways have been two very separate and unrelated phenomena. This perhaps explains why railways have traditionally been regarded as a nuisance in urban areas and why, in Spain, projects that introduce and/or integrate new HSR infrastructure and services have tended to propose radical or “hard” solutions. These
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solutions, which have generally implied covering or burying centrally located stretches of track, or building new external lines, have tended to treat the railway as an urban problem whose effects need to be palliated. As we shall see, these “hard” solutions, which tend to be complex and to require important levels of investment, are both intense and far-reaching. Choices were originally influenced by the anticipated property gains from the sale of former railway land and the subsequent displacement of old railway installations to new peripheral locations. Although such profits were initially expected to cover most of the costs associated with the wider projects, the current economic crisis, which has proved particularly long and difficult, has posed serious doubts about the future of many of these urban development and railway projects. As a result, many projects, including those of Valladolid, Zaragoza, Madrid and Barcelona, have been almost completely paralysed (Bellet & al., 2012).
Railway and urban transformation associated with the arrival of the HSR in Valladolid and Zaragoza
10 In Zaragoza and Valladolid, the restructuring of the railway system was seen as a major instrument of urban planning. Both are important urban areas within Spain’s urban system and have large areas of influence over their surrounding territories. Zaragoza, with a population of 664,953 (2015), is Spain’s fifth largest city by population and is the capital of the autonomous region of Aragon in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. It is about 310 km from Madrid and occupies a strategic position in the Ebro Valley corridor, which connects the centre of the peninsula to Barcelona and the French border. It is an important logistical and industrial node, which has notably specialised in the motor industry and in auxiliary appliances, paper and agribusiness.
11 Valladolid, which had 303,905 inhabitants in 2015, is the most important urban area in the northwest of the peninsula and is approximately 210 km from Madrid. Its strategic position for communications, through a wide network of transport corridors, and function as a logistical node within the European Atlantic Corridor, will continue to allow it to specialise as the main industrial pole in Castilla y Leon.
12 Both rail projects were mainly based on the construction of external railway lines for passing traffic which were supposed to make it possible to transfer freight and other more extensive rail installations to the urban periphery. This policy was to keep the main stations in more or less central locations and also to involve covering extensive sections of track passing through the central areas of the city.
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Figure 1. Zaragoza and Valladolid in the Spanish HSR context (May 2015).
Source: the authors’ own work based on ADIF
13 The displacement of major railway facilities to the periphery was to allow the transformation of central urban spaces, taking advantage of the property gains that would be generated from the sale of former railway land. In order to achieve this goal, specific urban renewal projects were designed for the land that was to be freed in central locations.
14 In both cities, the number of resulting residential uses has, however, been far greater than that of tertiary uses. This sharply contrasts with what occurred in similar urban projects carried out in other European cities, such as Lille and Lyon, in France (Fraser and Baert, 2003; Colomb, 2007; Hall, 1995). However, the urban planning strategies used by these two local government organisations are what most differentiate these cases. In Zaragoza, the combination of several different strategies has taken the form of major, inter-connected urban projects. In contrast, Valladolid’s urban development and rail project have not been accompanied by any other kind of global urban strategy.
The implementation of the HSR project in Zaragoza
15 In Zaragoza, the arrival of HSR could be understood as the introduction of an instrument capable of delivering the new urban plans and projects on which the city had already been working since the early 1990s. The first version of the Strategic Plan for the metropolitan area (Ebrópolis) was passed in 1998. The urban Master Plan (Plan General de Ordenación Urbana) was subsequently passed in 2001. Other urban projects of significant size and importance included: the Plan to Recover the Banks of the River Ebro; the Expo 2008, international exhibition; and the construction of one of the largest logistical platforms in Europe (Plaza).
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16 After tough negotiations, and much debate in the city concerning the best location for the new rail services, it was eventually decided to build a new station on the western side of the city, where there were already several other activities related to the classification of rail freight. However, the choice of this location implied a major remodelling of the railway system within the city. These changes to the railway system were expected: to provide opportunities to improve the general organisation of the city’s physical urban structure; to help to remove certain barriers associated with the railway; and to foster the development of a new city model that formed part of the Master Plan (Plan General de Ordenación) (Alonso and Bellet, 2009; Ureña & al., 2009).
17 A bypass for passing traffic was built to the south of the city. This was accompanied by the construction of a new freight station, located in an area where there were plans to build the PLAZA logistics platform. This platform, which was projected as one of the largest intermodal logistics platforms in southern Europe, with an area of more than 1300 ha, currently accommodates the premises of several important national and international companies, including Inditex, DHL Express, TDN, BSH, Barclays Bank, Imaginarium, Decathlon and Mann-Hummel Ibérica. The inter-modality of this logistics platform (which provides lorry, rail and plane connections) is one of its major strengths.
Figure 2. The new railway system in Zaragoza, following the arrival of HSR.
Source: the authors’ own work based on the railway project
18 The construction of the by-pass pulled the city out towards the south, thereby generating great expectations for further urban growth between the urban centre and the new external (road and rail) rings. Development projects were subsequently passed for several of the large plots of land created within the same process. These were then prepared for urbanisation and developed during the boom in the property cycle.
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However, a large number of the initially projected developments subsequently failed to emerge as a result of the property crisis and much of the land in question currently remains undeveloped.
Figure 3. The new railway station and the development plan for Delicias.
Source: based on Zaragoza Alta Velocidad, S.A
19 In the city centre, the old central station (El Portillo) was dismantled and the surrounding area was subjected to a renewal project which sought to develop a new urban centrality affecting a total surface area of around 9.3 hectares. These operations freed almost 105 ha of land near the centre of the city. The redevelopment plan for the Portillo area, which was passed in 2005, initially envisaged the construction of an area of housing and a series of important cultural amenities that were supposed to reinforce the traditional urban centrality of this area. However, this project has so far only delivered the cultural CaixaForum building (inaugurated in 2014) and a metropolitan railway station. The rest of the project has yet to be undertaken; the old railway station is still waiting to be demolished and a post office building has yet to be moved to a site near the new station.
20 Meanwhile, in the western part of city, a completely new station (Zaragoza-Delicias) has been built on land that had previously been occupied by the old freight station. This operation, which affects 95.8 hectares on the west side of the city, aims to open up this part of the city to the river, to connect the neighbourhoods on the west side of the metropolitan area (Delicias and Almozara), and to pull centrality outwards from the existing city centre and towards the location of the new station.
21 The new intermodal station has been equipped with a hotel and with commercial and restaurant services, but it has so far been unable to attract any major uses to its immediate vicinity. This was initially largely due to problems deriving from the
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economic crisis, but it has also been a result of an overambitious policy to create areas within the city earmarked for tertiary sector activities and which were supposed to share centrality throughout the urban area.
22 Urban development around the Delicias station, which included general operations and work to improve accessibility, progressed at a good rhythm between 2003 and 2008, when Zaragoza hosted Expo 2008, the international exhibition. However, the land to the west of the station, where the majority of 3,000 units of social housing were supposed to be built, has since remained undeveloped. Problems deriving from the management of this land, combined with the onset of the economic crisis, subsequently led to the paralysis of the development projects that had initially been reserved for this site. This has left an enormous urban void, which is currently surrounded by fences (Bellet and Alonso, 2016).
Figure 4. The development plan for the Portillo (old station) area.
Source: based on the scheme project presented by Zaragoza Alta Velocidad, S.A
23 The initial aim of Zaragoza City Council was to establish a technological development project, called the “Digital Mile”, in the area between Delicias and El Portillo. In this way, it sought to take the fullest possible advantage of the urban development located between the two railway areas (107 ha) and to organise a space dedicated to new technologies and the knowledge and information society. These projects area mainly related with the availability of land available after the urbanisation of former rail installations. As well as housing units, this project also foresaw the construction of a series of unique buildings that were meant to stand out on account of their specific functions. These were to be related to multimedia technologies and to provide digitalised public spaces and technological and cultural amenities.
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Figure 5. The current state of work in the Portillo (left) and Delicias (right) areas.
Source: photos by the authors
24 To date, however, only two of the amenities associated with these new uses have come into service: the Digital Mile Nursery for Business Activity (located in the Zero Emissions Building) and the Etopia Centre for Art & Technology (CAT).
The implementation of the HSR project in Valladolid
25 The HSR line between Madrid and Valladolid finally opened towards the end of 2007. This followed a protracted period of technical studies that had begun back in 1987, with the General Plan for Railway Transport (Plan de Transporte Ferroviario), which in turn followed a series of somewhat contradictory prior studies that were presented over a period of twelve years.
26 The new railway infrastructure for Valladolid was ultimately conceived, not as a node and point of departure and arrival for rail travel, but rather as the main centre for a future tree-shaped HSR network that would be connected to the northeast and north of Spain. Its construction and entry into service were first delayed, and then paralysed, over a period of five years. Here, HSR formed part of a project for the urban renewal of Valladolid which had been passed by the local government administration back in 2001.
27 This study included informative studies for the Central Railway Corridor (Pasillo Ferroviario Central), the Eastern Variant and the New Railway Complex which were approved by Spain’s Ministry of Public Works (Ministerio de Fomento) in December 2005. It was followed by the corresponding Public Information period and the drafting of the construction projects.
28 In June 2005, the firm High Speed Valladolid (Valladolid Alta Velocidad) awarded the task of drafting the PGOU of Valladolid and the Special Plan for the reorganization of the Central Rail Network to a team led by the Richard Rogers Partnership. It was first necessary to design urban strategies and general proposals for the areas freed from railway uses, within a process that involved the drafting of what was, somewhat inappropriately, called a Master Plan. This document, which established the overall structure for the area and laid down the main guidelines for its urban design, has since inspired the reorganization of the general urban plan for Valladolid with respect to the Central Rail Network.
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Figure 6. The new railway system at Valladolid following the arrival of HSR.
Source: the authors’ own work based on the railway project
29 This modification was initially proposed between March 2008 and July 2009 and finally approved in 2010. This railway operation initially consisted of burying part of an 18 km-long Railway Corridor (using a 0.67 km-long tunnel on the urban periphery and a more central, 4.67 km long, tunnel leading to a new underground station) and building a 10 km-long stretch of standard gauge railway line (the Eastern Variant), which would also receive a New Railway Complex (with a central repair workshop, maintenance workshops, a marshalling yard and a freight terminal).
30 The eventual relocation of these installations to the by-pass will free an area of almost 100 ha in the city centre and the remaining stretches of track will be covered. This will allow the development of the largest urban renewal operation in the history of the city, at a cost that could exceed a billion euros.
31 Of the discontinuous area of some 995,549 m2 of land that was to be released from railway uses, the general plan for reorganization allowed 666,990 m2 to be released for residential uses (this implied enough land for around 6,065 new houses, or to accommodate 20,000 people, in a city of 130,000 inhabitants), 170,200 m2 for offices and hotels, 6,000 m2 for trade, catering and non-residential uses, and 5,000 m2 for private amenities (a total of 181,200 m2 for tertiary uses, or 21% of the sector’s total development potential) (Santos, 2006).
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Figure 7. The integration of the railway in the centre of Valladolid.
Source: Compiled by the authors based on images of the “Binding Memory on the Master Plan Modification – Plan for Central Railway Network” (July 2009), p. 76
Figure 8. The new Valladolid: the Rogers partnership project.
Source: Compiled by authors based on images of the “Binding Memory on the Master Plan Modification – Plan for Central Railway Network” (July 2009), p. 84
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32 The in-depth reorganization of the sector (with a total development capacity of 848,190 m2) was established through five intervention units (Unidades de Actuación) that divided the sector into different integrated management areas. According to this plan, half of the new housing was to be built in the most central area (Santos, 2006).
33 The proposal for an “Equipped Sustainable Corridor”, which was supposed to occupy a large part of the “Central Railway Corridor” (around 7 ha), subsequently turned out to be one of the best proposals within this urban intervention. It helped to balance the corridor concept by adding transversality and providing an urban articulation. It did this by providing the Central Railway Corridor with a number of public spaces for the use of pedestrians and cyclists: a platform reserved for public transport; a space, equivalent to at least 5% of the total area, dedicated to sports, recreation, leisure, meetings and hotel uses; a design compatible with road use; and a space equivalent to at least 85% of the total area dedicated to parks and gardens.
The role of “Zaragoza Alta Velocidad, S.A.” and “Valladolid Alta Velocidad 2003, S.A.”
34 Large-scale urban interventions of this type have far-reaching implications, which largely explain why limited companies were created in both cities to manage their actions. These corporations (which tend to be limited companies subject to public control) were created in order to manage macro-scale urban development projects associated with railway infrastructure. They were set up with public capital, following the signing of specific agreements between the national, regional and local administrations. The funding for these urban projects was almost exclusively based on the property gains to be produced by the sale of former railway land and its subsequent urbanisation. However, these property gains and values were calculated when the property market was still growing. At the beginning of the 21st century, the income to be obtained from the sale and development of property was expected to cover the cost of these large-scale urban rail projects. However, contrary to the initial expectation that the economy would continue to grow, the property bubble soon burst.
35 These companies, which had been set up with very little initial capital, then had to source external funding if they were to cover all of the requirements laid out in the development process: the assignment of construction projects and railway work and urban planning and the reorganization and development of units of action. The financing and timing of these actions was an essential part of the project, but the “self- funding” part of the process proved completely inadequate. A “self-funded” urban- railway action is supposed to be financed by the profits accruing from the use of former railway land released from rail-related functions. Administrations therefore tend to rely on only a minimum quantity of direct income and to seek the majority of their funding from property investment; this is a strategy that involves a significant level of risk (Santos, 2013).
36 Publically funded companies were created in both Zaragoza and Valladolid: Zaragoza Alta Velocidad 2002, Sociedad Anónima -ZAV- (http://www.zav.es/) and Valladolid Alta Velocidad 2003, Sociedad Anónima ‑VAV- ( http://valladolidaltavelocidad.es/) and governed according to similar rules and regulations. Their resources were provided, in equal parts, by the state and the corresponding regional and local administrations and
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also by ADIF (the Spanish rail administrator) and RENFE (the Spanish rail operator). These companies were headed by the Secretary of State for Infrastructure, who then proposed a General Director to run each company.
The role of “Zaragoza Alta Velocidad, S. A.”
37 In 2002, the different administrations involved in the project (the Ministry of Public Works, the Regional Government of Aragon and Zaragoza City Council) all signed an agreement covering the management, financing and execution of the work required to transform the railway and the contiguous urban landscape. The objectives of this agreement could be summarised as follows: to manage the urban development of the land that would not be destined for railway uses; to carry out the work required to provide the new rail infrastructure; and to ensure that the latter covered existing needs. To ensure that these objectives were met, the same partners, in collaboration with ADIF, created the public company Zaragoza Alta Velocidad (ZAV).
38 The value of the projected investment increased over time and currently stands at over a billion euros. The initial idea was to reinvest the profits that were to be obtained from the sale of land and its associated urban development in order to finance the corresponding railway and urban development operations (Alonso and Bellet, 2009). Managing this process did not, however, prove as simple as had initially been envisaged and, even before the onset of the economic crisis, a series of problems emerged with respect to property management. While all of the plots should have been registered within a period of two years, the economic and financial crisis effectively paralysed many of these operations. In fact, even today, most of these plots remain unsold and all of the development operations that have been carried out to date have had to be funded by the partners who signed the initial urban development agreement (Bellet and Alonso, 2016).
39 In addition to the problems associated with the management of railway land, the venture also suffered the consequences of its excessive number of obligations and urban projects and the cost of financing them; this far exceeded that of the urban transformation required to prepare the city for the arrival of the HST. When the property crisis arrived, it effectively put a block on urban development and put an end to the dream of achieving a rapid urban transformation. Even today, the plots of land in the vicinity of the station that had been left free for future development, which should have been sold off to finance the project, remain fenced off and unsold. In fact, ZAV is currently offering land for sale at prices that are 60% cheaper than those of 2002, in an attempt to offset part of the enormous debt that this company contracted as a result of its initial operations. Indeed, the company currently has more debts than assets. The ZAV debt amounts to € 400 million, with payment to banks due in 2019, whereas the current value of the land is € 214 million, compared to around € 500 million before the crisis (ZAV, 2014).
40 The bursting of the property bubble effectively put an end to one of the most important and ambitious urban transformation projects that Spanish cities have ever seen.
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The role of “Valladolid Alta Velocidad 2003, S.A.”
41 The Estudio Informativo (a preliminary report drawn up prior to the project) corresponding to the remodelling of Valladolid’s Arterial Railway Network and its urban integration, which had been commissioned by the Ministry of Public Works, was drafted in 2000. At that time the local administration also presented a report, entitled Iniciativa para el Desarrollo de Valladolid (Initiative for the Development of Valladolid), which laid out the different options for covering the railway and carrying out urban development. This report also examined the economic and financial viability of the operation, based on the profits to be obtained from the reconversion of urban land released from railway use.
42 Building on this base, in November 2002, the local, regional and state administrations signed a collaborative agreement to launch this urban-railway operation. Then, in January 2003, they founded Valladolid Alta Velocidad 2003 S.A. (VAV), a company created with public capital, but subject to private law. The task of VAV was to produce the reports and projects required to manage the associated urban development and to carry out work to install infrastructure on the land which would no longer be required for railway purposes once the railway installations had been moved. Its main purpose was therefore to coordinate the work of all the different entities involved in this vast city project, relating both to the railway and to urban development (Santos, 2013). The value of the projected investment increased over time and currently stands at over € 1,100 million.
43 This limited company was initially established with a capital of € 600,000. Of this, the Railway Infrastructure Administrator (ADIF) had a share of 37.5%, the railway operator RENFE 25%, the Regional Government of Castilla y León 25% and Valladolid City Council 12.5%. The balance sheets corresponding to the first five years of the company’s existence showed relatively little activity, although it has since contracted work to a value of over € 140 million. The company is therefore effectively being funded by a bank credit based on expectations of future property gains which have obviously not been forthcoming during the recent period of economic crisis. However, some market surveys has recently highlighted a loss in the value of the land: from € 1,065 million to 594 or 397 million depending on the survey (Norte de Castilla, 2015). The debt of the company is currently about € 400 million in 2015 and has asked to defer payment.
The economic crisis and the current state of these projects
44 The economic and financial crisis, and particularly the real property crisis, has brought the development of these macro-scale urban projects, and especially those involving property developments, to a grinding halt. Although the success of these projects essentially depends on making profits from associated property operations, which are now almost impossible to achieve, the strategies pursued have not changed very much and the development model is still mainly based on making money from property deals associated with the sale of this land.
45 Today, some fourteen years after the arrival of the HSR in Zaragoza, much of the project for remodelling the city centre associated with the reorganisation of the
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railway remains inactive and with little possibility of it being undertaken in the short to medium term. Apart from such basic work as providing railway services, constructing the new intermodal station, and improving accessibility in order to help develop the area immediately surrounding the station, little more has been done to deliver the projects that were initially envisaged.
46 The large urban voids that characterise the urban landscape between the new Delicias station and the land occupied by the former El Portillo central station are particularly desolate. In this part of the city, metallic fences are the predominant feature of the urban landscape. The project has yet to be completed and will probably need to be extensively revised, taking into consideration the present economic context and the current financial situation of ZAV.
47 In Valladolid, the rail infrastructure and equipment required to move the freight and maintenance services are currently under construction. This will make it possible to release several hectares of centrally located land and to generate income through property sales. The Eastern Variant and the New Railway Complex are also currently at the work stage, and the transfer of RENFE’s General Workshops is expected to take place in 2015.
48 VAV has obligations and investment perspectives that are hundreds of times greater than its initial social capital. It continues to work with the support of bank loans, but has an urgent need to raise capital, as its financial situation is becoming increasingly unsustainable. This explains why studies are currently underway to reduce the scale and cost of the initial operation and to find the best way to obtain income from related property operations.
Conclusions
49 In many cities, the arrival of the HST generated great expectations for urban renewal and urban development based on the property boom, favourable economic prospects and a host of neoliberal urban planning projects (Bellet, Alonso and Gutiérrez, 2012). However, the present economic crisis has called into question the viability of this type of project since most of the operations planned still remain unfinished. Even so, despite the very difficult economic context, it must be stressed that these railway and urban development projects have not been abandoned; they simply remain paralysed, waiting for a change in the property market.
50 In this work, we have examined two examples of this phenomenon: the arrival of the HST in Zaragoza and Valladolid. In both cases, the HST was seen (both directly and indirectly) as a strategic instrument that would bring about urban change and transformation.
51 These projects were conceived during a period of economic boom, when there were great expectations of obtaining considerable profits from property-based operations associated with the sale and reuse of former railway land. The initial plan was then to use this revenue to finance the projected rail and urban transformations. To co-finance and make these rail and urban development projects effective, local and regional authorities established public limited companies under publically controlled partnerships, in collaboration with ADIF (the Spanish Rail Administrator) and RENFE (the Spanish rail operator).
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52 These unrealistic macro-projects call for economic and financial resources that far exceed those available to most administrations. They first appeared within a period characterised by a clearly neoliberal approach to urban development, but the current economic reality has since put them into perspective. It is now obvious that the property market expectations on which the actions of limited companies under public control such as Zaragoza Alta Velocidad (ZAV) and Valladolid Alta Velocidad (VAV) were originally based were unrealistic within a context of economic crisis. Faced with the problem of not being able to undo what has already been done and a current lack of public funding, the companies and entities involved in these ventures now find themselves having to continue to follow strategies that had been adopted prior to the crisis. Continuing to work in this way, only an upturn in the property cycle or a major financial commitment on the part of public administrations is likely to save these projects.
53 In both of the study cases, the debts incurred must be renegotiated with banks. There are also other Spanish cases in which no action has yet been initiated. These cases largely explain why everything has been paralyzed and some companies have even been liquidated. In the cases of Zaragoza and Valladolid, however, the only real option - at least officially- is to limit the ambitions of the initial projects in order to try to reduce costs, and also to seek refinancing based on public guarantees while waiting for a change in the economic cycle.
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ABSTRACTS
In Spain, several local councils have taken advantage of the arrival of high-speed rail to rethink the whole railway system within the city. These rail transformations have caused major urban changes and have also been accompanied by property development projects that were planned during the economic expansion of the 1990s and first decade of 2000s, prior to the arrival of the economic crisis in 2008. The combination of these factors has resulted in some of the most important urban renewal and redevelopment projects ever planned in Spain. This has been the case in two large intermediate cities: Valladolid (303,905 inhabitants in 2015), located on the northwest HSR line, which received new services in 2007, and Zaragoza (664,953 inhabitants in 2015), located on the Madrid-Barcelona-French border HSR line, where the new train service arrived in 2003. In Spain, the introduction of HSR services has been accompanied by certain specific issues relating to their initial conception, subsequent management and associated governance; these are illustrated in the article through case studies of Valladolid and Zaragoza.
En Espagne, plusieurs conseils municipaux ont profité de l’arrivée du train à grande vitesse pour repenser l’ensemble du système ferroviaire dans la ville. Ces transformations ont provoqué des changements urbains importants et ont également été accompagnées de projets de développement immobiliers, prévus lors de l’expansion économique des années 90 et pendant la première décennie de l’an 2000, jusqu’à l’arrivée de la crise en 2008. La coïncidence de ces différents facteurs a conduit à une série de projets urbains de réaménagement et de redéveloppement parmi les plus importants jamais conçus en Espagne. Cela a été le cas dans deux grandes villes espagnoles: Valladolid (303 905 habitants en 2015), sur la ligne nord-ouest à grande vitesse, qui a bénéficié d’une nouvelle desserte en 2007 et de Saragosse (664 953 en 2015) sur la ligne à grande vitesse Madrid-Barcelone-frontière française, où le train est arrivé en 2003. En Espagne, l’introduction des dessertes TGV s’est accompagnée de modalités spécifiques quant à leur conception initiale, puis en termes de gestion et de gouvernance; ceux-ci sont illustrés dans l’article à travers l’étude des cas de Valladolid et Saragosse
INDEX
Keywords: urban redevelopment, high-speed rail, urban structure, rail and the city, Spain, Valladolid, Zaragoza Mots-clés: réaménagement urbain, train à grande vitesse, structure urbaine, le chemin de fer et la ville, Espagne, Valladolid, Saragosse
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AUTHORS
CARMEN BELLET SANFELIU Department of Geography and Sociology, University of Lleida, Spain, [email protected]
LUIS SANTOS GANGES Department of Urban Planning and Representation of Architecture, University of Valladolid, Spain, [email protected]
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City planning related to the completion of the new high speed line in Rennes, Brittany The unexpected competition between central projects and peripheral private investments L’urbanisme lié à l’arrivée de la Ligne à Grande Vitesse à Rennes (Bretagne). La concurrence inattendue entre projets publics en centre-ville et opérations privées en périphérie
Romaric Nègre and Guy Baudelle
Introduction
1 With a provision scheduled for summer 2017, the Bretagne-Pays de la Loire high-speed line (BPL HSL) between the cities of Le Mans and Rennes will extend the Atlantic HSL commissioned in 1989 from Paris to Le Mans (Figure 1). The new infrastructure will set Rennes, the administrative capital-city of Brittany, less than one hour and half away from Paris compared to the current two hours and ten minutes.
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Figure 1. The BPL HSL within the French high-speed rail network.
Source: adapted from Wikipedia Commons
2 If time savings will be significant, a sharp breakdown threshold in the global mobility scheme seems unlikely to occur given the current high level services frequency (AUDIAR, 2014). Considering, however, that any HSL is likely to induce “dynamics of amplification and acceleration in pre-existing trends” but rarely to cause a trend reversal (Offner, 1993), it is necessary to consider the socio-economic path of Rennes and the territorial integration process of the infrastructure reflected by local actors.
3 However an extensive literature about the possible effects of HSL on urban growth and especially on the direct and indirect impacts of newly connected (central or peripheral) railway stations on the local real estate office market calls for caution. The state of the art reveals the absence of certainty as to the reality and extent of the possible effects of a HSL (Jensen-Butler & Madsen, 2005; Bruinsma et al., 2008; Ureña, Ménerault & Garmendia, 2009; Mignerey, 2012; Baudelle, 2016), including the so-called "structuring effects" (Offner, 2009 & 2014). The very first HSLs have raised the same hopes and concerns (Offner, 1993) while the HSRs under construction abroad give rise to contradictory scientific expectations considering these uncertainties (Kantor, 2008; Randolf, 2008; Todorovitch, 2011; Lee, 2007). The misfortunes of high-speed rail in Spain have led to many contradictory tests to estimate its impact (Esteban 1998; Gutierrez Puebla, 2004; Bellet et al, 2010; Terrin, 2011; Garmendia et al, 2012; Facchinetti-Mannone et al., 2013; Richer, 2014). The recurrent nature of such research only demonstrates that knowledge remains uncertain since the earliest Japanese works on Shinkansen (eg. Hirota, 1985 & Ino, 1986).
4 Certainly a number of focal points have been confirmed from one study to another. It is thus noted that existing industries can grow after the HSL arrival but also face new competition from outside companies. The case of Lyons (Bonnafous, 1987) has
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demonstrated that high-level business services have successfully competed with Paris by enhancing their skills on specific niches responding to the demand of SMEs. Locally new office surfaces around the stations may lead to the relocation of existing ones (Bazin et al., 2009) or even catch outside companies (cases of Lyons, Le Mans, Nantes and Rennes) due to the will to capture a modernity image impact (SETEC, 2004) and even take advantage of a “supermodernity” effect (Nicolin, 1995). Generally speaking the emergence of high-speed rail has little effect alone given that such an innovation (as defined by the geographical theory (Hägerstrand, 1952)) needs to be accompanied by other measures to increase its economic reach including office programs or improvement of regional and urban transport. A new HSL does not in itself guarantee new investments as demonstrated by many cases of overinvestment in office real estate and oversized projects around the HSL stations (Plassard, 2003; Bazin et al., 2011; Delaplace et al., 2013). The impact on office dynamics seems stronger in larger metropolises (Mannone, 1997) but even in large metro areas like Lille the investment has proved to be hazardous (Ménerault, Barré, 2001).
5 More recently but similarly, many “HSL” stamped real estate projects planned during the economic boom have been caught by the crisis. For instance, in Rotterdam, the HSL implementation has doubled in a year the office space available in the city centre. But the market failed to keep pace so that the surfaces sold off in 2015 were three times lower than in 2008, leaving a third of the stock empty despite the settlement of the police department’s imposing building (NVM, 2015). Short distance relocations within the metro area and effects of anticipation are rather common but do not establish the HSL as the decisive factor (Delaplace et al., 2013; Delaplace, 2009).
6 Thus the term HSL opportunity should be preferred to the more common ones of “effects” or “impacts”. Firstly because at this stage we can only situate our work in a forward-looking approach as we aim to identify the appropriation strategies of actors and their spatial implications. Secondly because we will demonstrate that the HSL is not the Rennes metropolitan project’s ultimate purpose. It would then be risky and inappropriate to isolate the involvement of the HSL from the global metropolitan dynamics.
7 This paper intends to shed light on the strategies related to the HSL BPL opportunity by Rennes local public actors through an analysis of the city’s economic trajectory, its territorial positioning and ongoing urban infrastructures. The latter are indeed interesting indicators to evaluate both the strategies implemented by the actors of the local system and the spatial transformation process (Bérion, 1998). Our contribution is divided into three parts. The first one suggests that Rennes economic path exhibits a potential for exploiting the “HSL opportunity”. Then it is shown the extent to which the metropolitan communication strategy has been reoriented to account for the HSL project. Finally it is stated that the high expectations are facing an unexpected competition by peripheral investments, leading to reassess the HSL opportunity and eventually the city development strategy itself.
Economic orientations: an innovative city likely to take advantage of the coming HSL
8 For a long time, Brittany has been considered as a remote and peripheral area to such an extent that even Rennes, its regional capital-city, was usually seen as a badly
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connected city (Baudelle, Guy, 2004; Havinden, Quéniart & Stanyer, 1991). The local take-off only happened in the 1960s thanks to a manufacturing relocation process outside of Paris metropolitan area followed by the development of new higher education institutions (Baudelle, 2008). A typical snowball cumulative effect has happened since the 1980s, making the city a technopole (high-tech city) namely with electronics, telecommunications and later computing as fields of excellence. This success story explains why the impressive population growth occurred (Paulus, 2004) before the construction of the first HSL section between Paris and Le Mans that has shortened in 1989 the travel time between Paris and Rennes to less than 2 hours fifteen, the gain exceeding an hour. The agglomeration (that is, the built up area) has grown up from 234 000 (1982) to 322 000 inh. in 2013 while the functional urban area – officially called aire urbaine and defined as the travel-to-work area (TTWA) for at least 40 % of the workforce –, has reached 680 000 inh. (Clanché, 2014). Rennes shares its high rate of development with other technology-driven cities (Figure 2).
Figure 2. 30 years of urban dynamics: annual population change (in %) of the four largest French agglomerations and of the main high technology centres from 1982 to 2011.
NB: no bar appears in case of zero change. Source of the data: INSEE
9 Due to its academic weight and to its development based on innovative industries, Rennes has got a high share of higher strategic functions approximated by the index of professionals of metropolitan functions (PMFs) (CFM: cadres des fonctions métropolitaines) elaborated by the French National Office for Statistics (INSEE). These functions refer to five professional, knowledge-intensive industries: management, business between firms, R&D, intellectual services and finally culture and entertainment. Outside Paris, Rennes had the 8th concentration in 2006. The development was particularly high from 1999 to 2008 (Figure 3) due to a diffusion process from Paris towards the main regional capital cities (INSEE, 2009a; Van Puymbroeck & Reynard, 2010; Agences d’urbanisme de l’Espace Loire-Bretagne, 2010; Observatoire des territoires, 2015).
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Figure 3. Change in professionals of metropolitan functions in the main French metro areas between 1999 and 2007.
Source: Agences d’urbanisme de l’Espace Loire-Bretagne, 2010
10 This is confirmed by the concentration of members of the so-called creative class (within the meaning of Florida’s (2002) theory). According to INSEE, the creative core class represents the basis of the creative class as it is more significant of innovative capacities than the other ones (professionals and bohemians). The calculation shows that Rennes belongs to the top 7 among the large metro areas (INSEE, 2009b).
11 The ICT sector is very dynamic compared to other cities with an increase of nearly 10 % from 1995 to 2011, so that two thirds of the 20,000 private jobs in consulting and expertise are part of the digital economy (AUDIAR, 2012). The correlation between innovative industries, high share of professionals and economic performance would explain the job dynamics trend observed among the regional cities since the mid-1970s until now (DATAR, 2012 & 2013).
12 Between 1998 and 2009, the annual employment change rate was 1.7 % in the Rennes TTWA to compare with the national mean (+ 0.8 %). The unemployment rate has increased only by 0.9 (in points) from the beginning of 2003 to the end of 2011 versus 1.1 at the national level (Mas, 2011). The resilience since the 2008-2009 has been better so that the unemployment rate was 8.1 % only at the beginning of 2015 versus 10.3 % at the national level, making Rennes 55th among more than 300 employment areas. At the end of 2014, Rennes was awarded (as nine other candidates) by the State’s "French Tech" label which rewards the dynamism and international standing of its start-ups.
13 Due to its favourable economic basis, one could expect that the forthcoming HSL would enhance again the economic development of Rennes. However, despite its economic performances, the city has some weaknesses explainable by its size – it is only the 11th
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French agglomeration –, particularly in terms of international fame (AUDIAR, 2014), explaining the high expectations about the future infrastructure (AUDIAR, 2012).
A radical and difficult shift in the communication strategy
14 The main target of the Rennes metropolitan area’s public communication actions is historically the local population on themes like quality of life, social cohesion, urban culture and its development project. As stated by Houllier-Guibert (2008), culture prominently figures as the basis of Rennes territorial communication. It represents the vital element of urbanity, one of the main driving forces of the metropolitanisation process from the 1980s to the mid-2000s (Houllier-Guibert, 2009). During this intense population growth era, public communication, mainly internal, has concentrated on developing a sense of local belonging (Guillier, 2002) through an ideology of proximity and “territorial happiness” (FNAU, 2005).
15 However, for the last few years, a strategic reversal happened. If quality of life and proximity remain the fertile soil for the local image, the focus is significantly turning towards the national and international levels. Due to the increasing competition between cities, Rennes as a second tier regional metropolis seeking internationality is moving towards a proactive economic development based on its amenities (Jouve, Lefebre, 2004). This change in the objective, size and design of the territorial offer is supported by an “actorial turn” (Houllier-Guibert, 2008) that highlights the rising claim of the role of the Rennes metropolitan authorities in “designing the future” and enhancing the (too weak) international profile.
16 What is the influence of the HSL BPL project on such a strategic turn? Is it the trigger, the catalyst or the endower of legitimacy? The answer is not obvious. Still, the accessibility allowed by the HSL is an opportunity for the metropolitan area to reconsider its attractiveness strategy, especially as the level of facilities in sport, culture and accommodation is considered poor compared to other French cities, Rennes remaining at the level of Nancy (20th French FUA) according to the local planning agency itself (AUDIAR, 2012c). The redefining of the metropolitan project for a greater (inter)national visibility fosters reflections on the city’s image outside local borders. However, for some authors the image effect of HSR hardly exceeds the intra- regional scale, at least in the short run (Willligers, 2008; Bazin et al., 2009). Unlike some French similar regional cities such as Bordeaux or Toulouse, respectively spontaneously associated with wine and aerospace, the capital of Brittany definitely suffers from a lack of image (AUDIAR, 2014), in particular on the economic front (Houllier-Guibert, 2012). Its identity depiction is as complex as instructive. Frequently associated with Brittany, a region that is surrounded by an international aura through a strong traditional symbolism (Oco Global, 2007), Rennes is in a sense paradoxically embarrassed by the deep Breton cultural identity that contrasts with its modern territorial stance and hinders its economic and technological image (Chapuis, 2013). Like Strasbourg and Alsace, the coherent articulation between the regional image and the “city picture” is being discussed. The Rennes Development Agency asserts for instance that “the challenge is, in the future, to be able to identify Rennes with no exclusive link with Brittany” (AUDIAR, 2014, p. 3).
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17 In addition to remain sustainable, the current building up of the renewed image of Rennes has to be thought in the light of the specific territorial resources. In our view, the “desire of territory” should not emerge from an “utopisation process” (Thiard, 2007) or be limited to cultural events – a strong feature of the territorial ideology in Rennes – but should rather aim at reaching a long-term differentiation in connection with local factors (Bertolini, Spit, 1998). The urban aesthetic values are surely powerful levers of exogenous attractiveness but territorial hospitality and quality of life cannot be considered as an exclusivity of Rennes and “are insufficient to stimulate an internationalisation process” (AUDIAR, 2014, p. 2). However, the high-tech city status that we have stated represents a powerful vector of external visibility. Indeed, it captures and emphasizes the excellence of the local economy, the innovative capacity of its digital ecosystem as well as the quality of higher education institutions.
The public urban projects: high expectations but strong local competition
The city planning strategy: seeking for the optimal valuation of the HSL opportunity
18 In this part of the paper we aim at reading the metropolitan project in the light of the two major territorial ideologies – seemingly hardly reconcilable – of proximity and internationality, as it is from these ambitions that the urban project integrating the coming HSL is embodied. Indeed in this attempt to find the “genius loci” (Gumuchian, Pecqueur, 2007) that could differentiate Rennes among the European cities, the metropolitan project is a major lever for the territorial marketing of Rennes (Houllier- Guibert, 2009), considering “the urban project as a strategic tool that formalises the forward-looking ideas” (Tsiomis, Ziegler, 2007). Doing so it demonstrates the ability to achieve a political consensus and to structure a local governance that includes the high-speed line in its strategic vision (Bazin et al. 2006). The project also reflects the will of local actors to manage and value land, especially near the train station.
19 The international outreach strategy is detectable through the density of planning achievements which aim to increase the desirability of Rennes with regard to highly qualified professionals. The /International City /building designed to host invited foreign scientists and postgraduate students willing to conduct research in Rennes has opened by the end of 2015. In 2018, around one year after the provision of the HSL BPL, the new Convention Centre will be completed in the heart of the historical centre. The monitoring and promotion of these new facilities are implemented by “Destination Rennes”, a new Société Publique Locale (Publicly-owned Local Corporation) supposed to become the single organisation of the metropolitan area devoted to the promotion of Rennes.
20 However, it should be noted that these projects are more about catching-up involvements to overcome the current internationality deficit than about bold and distinctive prospective policies. Ranked last among the 12 major French cities in the hosting of conferences and exhibitions by the ICCA1 in 2012, Rennes is expected to absorb its shortcomings thanks to the Congress Centre (AUDIAR, 2012) more than to intensify comparative advantages. All the more so as the improvement of its territorial offer for highly educated individuals is linked to the achievement of standard facilities,
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or at least facilities which are not basically able to encourage a clear differentiation vis- à-vis other similar metropolises.
21 Fortunately, according to Trip (2007), the HST has an international image. It also remains associated to a smart way of travelling and still enjoys a fashionable image sometimes related to the striking architecture of its new glorious railway cathedrals. The expected HSL-fuelled future development is supposed to change the city perception into a self-fulfilling growth process also supported by the quality of place – in the sense of Florida and Jane Jacobs – and urban design improvements to which the type of attracted firms are supposed to be sensitive. A large-scale urban development could happen thanks to landmark buildings and conceptions of the railway station both as a node and a place (Trip, 2007).
22 The potential for translating the HSL opportunity into comparative advantages is a priori more in the pursuit of a high level of accessibility at the railway station in Rennes (AUDIAR, 2012). Intimately linked to the HSL project, the second metro line to be inaugurated in 2019 will enable, complementarily with the first one, to easily “slide” (Ménerault, Barré, 2001) from an inter-metropolitan mobility to an intra-metropolitan mobility. This “last mile” management, so damaging to some high-speed rail stations (notably “ex-urbanised stations”) (Ollivro, 1999; Troin, 2010), will potentially lead to a seamless transport without too constraining transfers. In a sense, it shows the local actors’ willingness to add an extraterritorial function to the local scope of the metropolitan network through the HSL. By connecting the train station and its business district, the technological park Rennes Atalante, the International City, the Convention center and the University campuses, the metro network “endeavors to order the articulation between the constitutive parameters of the [external reach] of the city” (Tsiomis, Ziegler, 2007, p. 190). By virtue of its layout, the second underground line conveys a clear high-end service sector dimension when the first line rather proceeded from social issue by connecting the most densely populated, class neighbourhoods (Figure 4). Thus interrelated, the different metropolitan achievements concomitant to the HSL introduce an organic reconstruction of Rennes urban area.
The unanticipated competition from peripheral office locations
23 However, such an urban growth strategy introduces a sharp competition, exacerbated by land pressure fostered by the coming HSL, between central and peripheral business districts. Indeed, the latter benefit from accessibility levels similar to core business centres and take advantage of larger surfaces available as well as lower land prices. The latest example refers to the establishment of the Crédit Agricole bank local headquarters in La Courrouze ZAC, an Urban Development Zone of 115 ha sized to 100,000 m² of business activities and 5,000 housing units by 2025. Located along the ring road, the new building combines the advantage of a strong accessibility by road and air from outside and by local public transport as well due to the future metro line connecting it to the central station in 7 minutes only (Figure 4). In a sense, the nodal intensity in terms of feeder traffic (Richer, Vuidel, 2011) experienced by the railway station of Rennes is paradoxically jeopardising the EuroRennes project around the station area. In the constant pursuit of accessibility gains, what we consider as time savings should be regarded as space savings, because higher average speeds may be reinvested to reach more distant destinations (Joly, 2003). Conversely office central locations close to the
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station may suffer worse road accessibility and even by public transport due to the possible lack of central car parks and park-and-ride facilities by metro line heading.
Figure 4. Interrelated planning projects and development zones in the agglomeration of Rennes.
24 Despite this competition, the new economic showcase of the Brittany’s capital city remains embodied by the ambitious EuroRennes program even if public support policies implemented to grab the “HSL opportunity” are clearly not limited to planning projects around the station area (AUDIAR, 2012). Architectural signals convey the ambition of prestige and international outreach: 125,000 m² dedicated to office activities, 1,400 housing units, a vast vegetated esplanade crossing the new exchange terminal, a 80- metre tower… Many flagship constructions designed to make EuroRennes an “appealing product” for Brittany (Figure 5).
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Figure 5. Model of EuroRennes project on a presentation leaflet by Rennes Metropole.
Source: Rennes Metropole
25 Nevertheless, in spite of the proactive support by the local authorities trends show a contraction in the initial project’s scope and some form of listlessness in the marketing pace. Such rescaling and fragmentation of the project are not specific to Rennes. Evidences come from previous similar planning achievements which have experienced a declining trend like Novaxis (Le Mans) or Euralille, whose current activity masks an extended market depression in the filling of business premises (Ménerault, Barré, 2001). Already, during the previous renovation of the Rennes station area (1990-1998) for the arrival of the TGV, difficulties in establishing an ambitious new service-sector hub in the city centre led to the reduction in surfaces allocated to office properties2 (Ménerault, Barré, 2001). At that time, the competition from peripheral business districts emerged as an explanation for this lack of targeting. For all that, can we really assert that the same process applies today concerning the EuroRennes project? The global regulation policy of new office volumes orchestrated by the metropolitan authorities and issues surrounding the temporality of planning tempt to moderate such an internal competition. Indeed in 2010, following national laws and regulations concerning the management of local public services, the Urban Community of Rennes created a single GIE (Group of economic interest) consisting of three publicly-owned local planning corporations dedicated to all programs of metropolitan interest. Under political control from design to completion, development projects integrate the metropolitan strategic guidance. Within this context, the EuroRennes project needs to be put into perspective with other key programs, among them the two peripheral major land transactions of La Courrouze and ViaSilva (Figure 4).
26 The seeming competition then conceals different times in the implementation of the three main high-end service sector districts in Rennes (Figure 6). The current commercial difficulties encountered by EuroRennes and the recent setting of key
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accounts in La Courrouze and ViaSilva can partially be explained by the maturity of these peripheral programs, whilst for now EuroRennes does not offer any completed office surface for potential investors. If it seems in the nature of local authorities to “place high the cursor of territorial optimism” (Guillier, 2002), the EuroRennes project shows the limited ability of local actors in creating a stimulating effect which sets the private market in motion with a two or three-year time frame, especially when a competitive and often substitutable offer of new office space already exists. Previous local public stakeholders involved in planning office buildings acknowledge their total dependence on real estate cycles.
Figure 6. Distinct paces of development for the three strategic high-end service spaces.
Source: Territoires, Rennes Métropole
27 However, the temporary suspension of new office completed in La Courrouze and the imminent arrival of the BPL HSL have initiated the first real estate transactions in EuroRennes. In November 2015, a national SCPI3 (Civil Property Placement Company) acquired the assets, in a VEFA4 (sale before completion) contract, of the Urban Quartz program orchestrated by two national promoters (Figure 7). According to a local player, this first ever acquisition of real estate assets in Rennes by a leading national property company is a tangible sign of the new dimension reached by the local high- end real estate market. Concerning the commercial launch, little or no information have been passed on. Seeking to a new installation, a local business law firm would be in the process of finalising a transaction in the Eurosquare program and a major insurance group is watching with interest an eventual more centrally located development. The pioneering investors also hope to attract companies currently settled in the outer suburbs of Paris where the square meter is the same price but without any central location advantage. Anyway the question is whether EuroRennes will remain an adjustment variable of the new office market in Rennes or be able to act as the pilot high-end service sector centre long awaited by local authorities. It is probably still too early to answer.
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Figure 7. The three main development programs in EuroRennes: different players, dynamics and temporalities.
Key office Square Scheduled development meters of Promoters involved completion programs before office usable date mid-2018 floor space
National promoters : Icade (the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations’ public real- URBAN QUARTZ 12 980 m² Late 2017 estate subsidiary) and La Poste immo (real- estate subsidiary of the La Poste Group)
EUROSQUARE Regional promoter : Giboire 5 900 m² Late 2017
IDENTITY 3 Regional promoter : Giboire 18 876 m² Mid-2018
28 Source: Perial, Giboire, Icade
Conclusion
29 Anticipation and support strategies to value the HSL opportunity implemented by Rennes public actors are hardly dissociable from a comprehensive metropolitan project in which the high-speed infrastructure is only one piece of a large puzzle. To some extent, the BPL HSL has sounded like a profound trigger for the reorientation of Rennes strategy and a catalyser for a common vision (Terrin, 2011) – what Bérion (1998) would call the participatory effects of a new transport infrastructure. The approval on the “2020 Urban Community Program” has led local institutions to shift their territorial focus towards Europe, putting forward local socio-environmental amenities and distinctive economic assets such as ICT, agro-food industry and R&D ecosystem. In other words, it aims at enhancing the reach and clarity of the local economic potential (AUDIAR, 2012). As part of this prospective strategy, the HSL has to be seen as a permissive effect (Bérion, 1998) for an increased valuation of Rennes socio-economic dynamism. If the arrival of the infrastructure in 2017 is stimulating a catch-up in the business tourism sector through new facilities that emphasized an asserted international status, it creates with the new metro line system a functional change inside the metropolitan area. However, despite being driven by strong inter-municipal governance, the local territorial transformation remains complex. Intra-territorial competitive pressures between interrelated business districts and global economic conditions seem to have annihilated the initial optimism around the EuroRennes project, symbolic showcase of an expected international appeal. A clear sign that anticipation and support public policies are necessary but not sufficient conditions (Bazin et al., 2006) to lay the foundations of a successful territorial insertion for a HSL.
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NOTES
1. International Congress and Convention Association. 2. If all scheduled housing units have been delivered in 1998, the surfaces allocated to new office have been dropped down from more than 13,000 m² planned to less than 9,000 completed at the same date (Ménerault, Barré, 2001).
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3. Société civile de placement immobilier ; i.e. Perial asset management. 4. Vente en l’état futur d’achèvement.
ABSTRACTS
Over the last decades, the metropolitan area of Rennes (Western France) has experienced a sharp demographic and economic dynamism compared with other similar French urban areas. The new high-speed line between Le Mans and Rennes (hereafter BPL HSL) to be opened in 2017 is carrying major expectations from local public actors. In this paper, we examine urban projects associated with the high-speed line in Rennes as tangible spatial expressions of a global prospective vision for Rennes post-BPL HSL. Analyzing the main factors explaining the vibrancy of the metropolitan area, we focus on the territorial positioning of Rennes and its attempts to capture the “HSL opportunity” and accelerate the current pace of socioeconomic dynamism. However, such an urban growth strategy introduces a sharp competition in the new office market between central projects and peripheral investments.
Depuis plusieurs décennies, l’aire métropolitaine de Rennes connait un dynamisme économique et démographique marqué. La nouvelle Ligne à Grande Vitesse ferroviaire entre Le Mans et Rennes (LGV BPL) attendue en 2017 suscite indiscutablement de fortes attentes de la part des acteurs locaux. Dans cet article, nous analysons les projets urbains rennais associés à l’arrivée de la très grande vitesse comme des manifestations spatiales de la vision métropolitaine post- LGV BPL. Après avoir mis en exergue les principaux facteurs à l’origine du dynamisme de l’aire rennaise, nous tentons d’identifier à travers le positionnement territorial de la capitale bretonne le rôle de différents projets urbains concomitants à l’infrastructure dans l’appréhension et l’intégration de l’« opportunité LGV ». Pour autant, cette stratégie de croissance urbaine introduit une concurrence aiguë sur le marché des bureaux neufs entre les projets du centre-ville et les investissements en périphérie.
INDEX
Mots-clés: projet urbain, opportunité Ligne à Grande Vitesse, stratégies d’anticipation et d’accompagnement, concurrence intra-urbaine, Rennes Keywords: urban project, high-speed line opportunity, anticipation and support strategies, intra-urban competition, Rennes
AUTHORS
ROMARIC NÈGRE ESO-Rennes (UMR CNRS 6590), University of Rennes 2, UFR Sciences Sociales, Place du Recteur Henri Le Moal, CS 24307, F-35043 Rennes CEDEX, France, [email protected]
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GUY BAUDELLE ESO-Rennes (UMR CNRS 6590), University of Rennes 2, UFR Sciences Sociales, Place du Recteur Henri Le Moal, CS 24307, F-35043 Rennes CEDEX, France, [email protected]
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“Give me a high-speed rail station, or nothing!” How private stakeholders consider investing in the high-speed rail station’s area in shrinking cities The case of Saint-Étienne (France) « Une gare TGV sinon rien ! ». Quartiers de gare TGV et promotion immobilière dans des villes en décroissance. L’exemple de Saint-Etienne
Aurélie Delage
Introduction: high-speed rail stations as a spur to dynamism in shrinking cities?
1 Over the last decade, numerous cities in France and in Europe have engaged in urban regeneration projects in the area around their central station. Regardless their size, those aspirant European-class cities all strove hard to get a high-speed rail (HSR) stop and then implement an ambitious project to facelift the area around the station. The new HSR station area is meant to showcase the dynamism of the whole city. These projects include office and service-oriented buildings, functional mixing, social mix and iconic architecture, which are commonplace features of a consensual urban project. While addressing urban blight, the aim of those cities is twofold: to be more attractive in the competition between European cities, and to curb urban sprawl and thus comply with sustainable development requirements by increasing the population density in the area surrounding a reinforced transportation hub.
2 One may argue though that this strategy is certainly relevant for large cities, but that it may be oversized for second- and third-tier cities, whose ability to reach the level of a
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global city is less obvious (e.g., Saint-Etienne, France). However, it is in those very cities that this kind of project seems to be the most desirable and to raise hope in a bright future among local authorities. Indeed, local representatives still strongly believe that an infrastructure is a lever for local development (Offner, 2014), even if it has been extensively covered (cf. literature review by Bazin et al., 2011) and debated (Controverses de l’Espace Géographique, 2014) that these benefits are far from being proved (Offner, 1993; Plassard, 1997; Joignaux, 1997, etc.). When the arrival of a high-speed train has some effects, it is in combination with other factors and those effects are of various kinds according to the region taken into account (Delaplace, 2012), they are differential (Chen and Hall, 2012) or have to be considered on the long run (Bretagnolle, 2014). Nonetheless, this belief is so deeply rooted that it still appears as a genuine spur for public action (Beaucire, 2014), as suggests the proliferation of urban projects: it contributes to focusing public investment on a deprived area of the city (Delage, 2013) and designing a regional strategy1 (Frémont, 2014). As a first step to the upgrading of the area, the HSR station is generally turned into a multimodal transportation hub to improve the connection between local and regional mass transit networks (Menerault (dir.), 2006).
3 Most of the research works about the relationship between HSR stations and urban development have focused on public actors’ strategies in major cities (Troin, 1997; Ollivro, 1999; Menerault, Barre (dir.), 2001; Facchinetti-Mannone, Bavoux, 2010; Bellet et al., 2012; Delage, 2013) and more recently in smaller cities (Facchinetti-Manonne et al., 2013; Roudier, 2015). Most of those research works agree on the HSR station being a “spearhead of a long-term, public, sector-led spatial strategy with deliberate regional planning designed to magnify and spread economic and regeneration benefits” (Brown and al., 2013, p 115), especially in France. But little is said about private stakeholders’ point of view. Studies led by the Laboratoire d’Économie des Transports2 in the mid-1980s to assess the effect of the new French HSR service between Lyons and Paris underlined that for private stakeholders, the HSR was “a bonus” (Bonnafous, 1987). More recently, research works about Rheims Clairmarais revealed that private companies would choose to come to Clairmarais less because of the presence of the new HSR service than thanks to the actual presence of modern office buildings in the area (Bazin et al., 2009)3. In both cases, the private stakeholders covered by the scope of the analysis are private companies, i.e. end-users. More has to be known about real estate developers, the actors who actually build the new HSR area prior to the arrival of end- users. In Rheims, recent research works showed that HSR was an “additional location factor” for developers, combined with other transportation amenities and a strong public-led urban project (Bazin et al., 2016). But the HSR is taken as a whole, and what precisely is attractive to developers remains unaddressed. This paper proposes to bridge this gap by focusing on the real estate developers engaging in a programme near an HSR station, and unfolding the many aspects of an HSR station. It proposes a new approach of the link between real estate and HSR: unlike many quantitative research works that focus on the effect of the HSR on real estate markets (Bazin et al., 2010) and land values (for instance using the hedonic approach, Mayor et al., 2008; Debrezion et al., 2011), this paper aims at qualifying the role played by the HSR in the decision making process of real estate developers.
4 Our analytical framework encompasses the challenges of urban regeneration in historic central station areas. It appears that there is a set of constraints that real estate developers have to deal with. As a go-between between banks, public-sector customers
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and end-users, most of real estate developers have to come to a compromise on (contradictory) constraints. On the one hand, they have to design a tailored programme to meet the needs of a specific place. When railway station areas are concerned, the cost of the works may be higher because the former presence of industries next to the station generates expensive depolluting processes. On the other hand, real-estate developers are dependent on banks and investors (especially as far as office building is concerned), whose rules of conduct are driven by risk-limiting strategies (Lorrain, 2011): they must meet the requirements for profitability and security that prevail in the financial world – which may lead to some standardized risk-limiting solution. As “anchoring” actors4 (Theurillat et al., 2014), real estate developers then take part to the increasing role of finance in the building of the city (Renard, 2008; Baraud-Serfaty, 2008, 2009).
5 Limiting risk often means investing in so-called “secure” places – namely, in the most desirable (economically, culturally dynamic) cities, and in the most desirable neighbourhoods (especially historic city centres) – hence a fierce competition among cities in a globalized world and a high spatial selectivity to the detriment of less attractive areas. This spatial selectivity has been even higher in the last past years because of the financial crisis. As a consequence, private stakeholders are more and more reluctant to invest in so-called “risky places”. Their action is thus driven to a greater extent by prudential rules of risk-limiting, meaning restricting the choice of potential investment fields and areas to already attractive ones.
6 This raises the following question: how does real estate development take place in “less-attractive” cities where the market forces are too weak to make the investment as profitable as in a regular place, and where there is no public direct subsidy to appeal to private investors? Our hypothesis is that the high-speed rail station does help to attract real estate developers in those supposedly risky cities. In the same way the HSR station is a spur for public-led ambitious projects; it may influence the way real estate developers take action. Academic economics and regional sciences handbooks tell us that the HSR station is a top-list feature to define a prime location 5 in the real estate world, especially for office buildings (MacDonald and MacMillen, 2010, among others). This overall high desirability of the HSR station is confirmed by the recurrence of urban projects based on a new business district next to a new HSR station6: is this rule still valid in post-industrial medium-size cities such as Saint-Etienne?
7 This paper aims at unfolding what precisely in the HSR station is attractive to market- driven stakeholders as real-estate developers: is it the station itself as a transportation hub, or the station area’s urban features (since train station areas traditionally are districts with a specific and ambiguous7 identity in the city, Kokoreff, 2002)? To which extent does this node-place ambivalence (Bertolini, 1998a et b) help them to offset the risks taken in non-attractive cities?
8 To address this issue, our methodology is qualitative and inductive, based upon the case study of Saint-Etienne Châteaucreux in France. Saint-Etienne is a former industrial city that is considered as a shrinking city (Wolff et al., 2013; Cunningham-Sabot, Roth, 2014), even a “loser city”8 (Rousseau, 2008) in a globalized world. The TGV 9 (brand of the French national railway’s high-speed rail) arrived in the city as early as 1981, at the moment when the first high-speed rail system was built between Paris and Lyons, France’s third largest city – the TGV runs then at a regular speed between Lyons and Saint-Etienne though10. Hence, this case study helps to single out the effect of the TGV
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as the significantly faster means of transport and as a brand over three decades in one of the first cities connected to the high-speed rail system. However, if any effect is to be proven, one will have to question why this effect occurred two decades after the city was being served by the TGV.
9 As part of a four-year fieldwork in Saint-Etienne (2008-2012), I interviewed each of the five real estate developers11 who had a programme being built or about to be built between 2010 and 201212. This fieldwork was completed by a few other semi-structured interviews with professionals having an overview of the real estate industry (including real estate agents)13. Most of those real-estate developers’ programmes were in the middle of the building process: that should minimize the risk of memory lapses, but cannot prevent the risk of ex post facto explanations, as the real estate developers all had won the bid a few months before. I then cross-referenced the interviews and professional reports. This extensive research work was recently updated thanks to a press review, the monitoring of specific websites14 and a small number of targeted interviews (June 2016).
10 To understand how real estate developers decided to engage in a programme in Saint- Etienne Châteaucreux despite the overall bad reputation of the city, this paper will first display a few facts and figures about the city, its real estate market and the real estate developers who are building the new buildings in Châteaucreux. Then, the analysis of the arguments and motivations of those developers will help to assess the role and importance of the HSR station in their decision.
Real estate developers in Saint-Etienne Châteaucreux, an overview
The Rise and Fall of Saint-Etienne: the making of a specific context
11 Saint-Etienne is located in the “Région Rhône-Alpes”, the second wealthiest region in France after Île-de-France (where Paris is), only 60 km from its capital city, Lyons. Despite this dynamic regional context, Saint-Etienne epitomises former coal mine and industrial cities that dramatically suffered from deindustrialisation during the last quarter of the 20th century. A boom town in the 19 th century, Saint-Etienne had a flourishing industry based on firearms, guns and bikes. The city hosted a royal manufacture and long had a strong relationship with the French central State that provided orders. Correlatively, local authorities long had few political power and very little interest in urban design (Bayon, 2001). When deindustrialisation hit the region, they went on focusing on economic matters to the detriment of urban planning, and heavily relying on central State subsidies (Verney-Caron, 1999; Béal et al. 2010).
12 It changed in the late 1990s when the census revealed the city was still losing population (-20 000 inhabitants in the last decade, i.e. almost one inhabitant out of ten15), especially young adults and skilled people (Masboungi, de Graveleine, 2005). These figures have to be viewed in the context of a city where households’ income was significantly lower than the regional and national averages, and where unemployment was higher than in the rest of the country16. The new mayor (M. Thiollière) then decided to put on the agenda urban regeneration as a top-list priority in order to stop the shrinking of the city and regain some attractiveness. Saint-Etienne implemented a new urban marketing strategy to get rid of the sticky pejorative image of a literally
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“black” city – Saint-Etienne is actually a late-follower of this reimaging strategy many cities had already implemented (Cunningham-Sabot, Roth, 2014). The local authorities chose to build their new image on design and creative classes (Rousseau, 2008; Sechi, 2016)17. They quickly engaged in several urban projects to move forward and upgrade the amenities of the city. For instance, a new show venue (“Zenith”) was ordered to Sir Norman Forster, and the Imperial Arms Factory was refurbished as a “Design Village” to host exhibitions such as the International Design Biennale (Zanetti, 2011).
13 The decision to facelift the railway station area is part of this new urban planning strategy. Actually, the arrival of the high-speed rail had not been anticipated by local authorities in the early 1980s, maybe because at that time the city was dealing with a severe industrial crisis. It is not until the mid-1980s that the idea of a business district arose. A study for the deputy mayor in charge of urban planning (M. Thiollière) proposed to redesign the station plaza and to add some office buildings in the vicinity of the train station to take advantage of the new TGV service (1986). But the economic crisis of the 1990s was a strong impediment to take any action. The same idea came back in the late 1990s, and was implemented in many steps, thanks to proactive political support and both local and national public investment. A 60-hectare development zone was created in 200718, after a public agency (Établissement Public d’Aménagement, EPA19) was created to design and implement the masterplan of the area (Figures 1 and 2).
Figure 1. Saint-Etienne Châteaucreux in its urban context.
Source: EPASE and A. Delage, 2016
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Figure 2. Urban regeneration programme around Saint-Etienne Châteaucreux HSR station.
Image 1000000000000DA8000008E747F46CD5.jpg Source: A. Delage, 2016
Facing one of the weakest real estate market in France
14 Taking action in Saint-Etienne is especially challenging for both public and private actors since the former cannot rely on abundant funding and the latter cannot rely on a strong land market that would be able to sustain the renewal of the city. When the urban project was engaged (prior to the 2008 crisis), the city actually had one of the France’s weakest land markets20. The prices in Saint-Etienne were on average significantly lower than in the other major cities of the Rhône-Alpes region (see Table 1).
Table 1: Saint-Etienne, a weak real estate market (2009)21.
15 However, these figures should be considered with caution since there is in Saint- Etienne quite a big gap between old-stone and new housing units’ prices, and between belt-line districts (less than 700 €/m² in 2009) and central districts with some architectural heritage. The residential real estate market is low mainly because of the poverty of the population living in Saint-Etienne. In the 1970s, the middle classes left the city centre to buy a house in the hilly suburbs. Contrary to most of French and European cities, gentrification of the historic core in Saint-Etienne is quite limited (Rousseau, 2008; Cunningham-Sabot, Roth, 2014) and the vacancy rate is rather high (10,4%22). As a consequence, the price of housing units, both to sale and to rent, is lower than in Lyons or Grenoble (another major city of the Rhône-Alpes Region)23.
16 The commercial real estate market is low as well. The offer was not matching the demand, mainly because available offices were for rent when the demand was actually to buy them24. Also, the offices were scattered in the metro area. In the late 2000s, the prices were lower in Saint-Etienne (130-150 €/m²) than in Lyons Part-Dieu (230-250 €/ m²)25 – this price gap was exactly the argument put forward by real estate agents in Saint-Etienne (see below). In 2014, the price gap between Lyons and Saint-Etienne remains the same: a prime location is priced 180 €/m² in Châteaucreux, 270 €/m² in Lyons Part-Dieu (250 €/m² in Marseille, 190 €/m² in Nantes, to be compared to 745 €/m² in Paris)26.
17 On top of that, real estate developers and real estate agents were unanimous that the city has a bad reputation as a weak market. As a consequence, some real estate developers even “blacklisted” the city because they considered that engaging in a programme there was too risky to be profitable27.
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National real estate developers are rebuilding Châteaucreux
18 Despite the very poor reputation of Saint-Etienne, some developers accepted to invest in the city mostly thanks to the initiatives taken by public actors (the municipality and then the EPA). Table 2 reviews the real estate developers and investors that have been or are currently leading a property programme in Saint-Etienne Châteaucreux. The redevelopment zone is meant to develop 160 000 m² of new housing units, and 200 000 m² of new office space by 2020.
Table 2. Comparison of the programmes led in the Châteaucreux area.
Source: EPASE + interviews by the author (2008-2016) Information gathered by the author, as of June 2016
19 First, unlike in Rheims (Bazin et al., 2009), all of the developers but one are national real estate developers. Four of them are listed on the French Stock Exchange: Bouygues (actually involved in three programmes through two of its branches) and Vinci are global players in construction and services when Altarea is a property group and BNP Paribas Real Estate is a branch of one of the major French banks. Then, Art de Construire and Cardinal Group28 are nationwide real estate developers with their headquarters in Lyons; they are not listed on the French Stock exchange. Only one developer is local: it is actually an architect who eventually engaged in real estate development for that programme only (thus being quite an exception in this overview). However, this local developer also cooperates with a national developer specialised in social housing. In other words, when using Theurillat and al’s categories: four developers belong to the “financialised” real estate capitalism, two belong to the market category and the last one is between self-development and market oriented development (Theurillat et al., 2015).
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20 As for the investors, the available information shows tighter relationships with the financial sphere when office buildings are concerned: Foncière INEA is a Real Estate Investment Trust specialised in new office buildings outside of Paris, whereas Heeuricap is an investment vehicle partly held by the Bouygues Group (nine-year lease) – surprisingly, the Casino Group does not own its headquarters building when it has two real estate companies (Mercyalis and Immobilière Groupe Casino). But there are some exceptions, especially in the Luminis programme where Saint-Etienne Métropole, the intercommunal body, owns a part of the building: this actually reveals the difficulties Altarea encountered to sell this programme, as the public authorities eventually decided to buy their premises not to jeopardise the building of what was designed as the flagship building of the area.
21 The presence of major companies can be explained by the very nature of the programmes implemented around a station. Most of them are rather large office buildings that require some high technical knowledge and some human capacity to complete the large and complex construction work within a reasonable time (once the amount of presold offices or housing units has secured the programme). Hence big companies tend to be more competitive to win tenders. Moreover, in those flagship projects, the client implicitly often demands an iconic and/or striking architecture, preferably designed by a world-class architect29. Not only is it supposed to ease the selling of the building, but also it is intended to benefit to the general image of the city. A national company is thus more likely than a local company not only to comply with the ambition of the project but also to have those architects in its address book. For instance, the iconic yellow Luminis was designed by award-winning Manuelle Gautrand, the future Îlot Poste Weiss was first designed by Pritzker Prize awarded Jean Nouvel30, and the Îlot F is designed by renowned Nicolas Michelin. As a consequence, this attraction for “starchitects” imposes an extra pressure on local architects and developers – the local architect I interviewed told me that he was not disadvantaged by a supposedly lack of proficiency nor because of the flatness of his proposals but by a lack of notoriety.
Is a handful of developers routinizing the regeneration of Châteaucreux?
22 A further analysis of the characteristics of those developers highlights that most of them are not first-timers in Châteaucreux nor in Saint-Etienne.
23 First, some of them tendered for many projects without winning the bid: they kept tendering with the hope they could eventually win and thus get some investment return – both financial and time investment. This is how Cirmad won the CESU bid, after three unsuccessful attempts31.
24 Then, when a programme has already been completed in Châteaucreux by a developer (Cirmad, BNP Paribas) or in Saint-Etienne (BNP-Paribas32), it means that this developer has some knowledge of the characteristics of the market, and found ways to circumvent the weakness of the market – for example by orienting it towards a larger size so that the programme would be large enough to cover the fixed costs (Cap City), or by creating a joint-venture with a social landlord (White Carbon, Medic Centre).
25 In the case of BNP-Paribas Real Estate, being a branch of a major bank also helps to sell housing units to investors, thanks to the network of bank advisors in bank agencies
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throughout the country. Those bank advisors may entice their clients into investing in housing units and thus taking advantage of temporary tax exemption programmes, such as the so-called Scellier Scheme (“Dispositif Scellier”) offering people who buy housing units only to rent them to get a tax relief during nine years and to which the Châteaucreux area qualified33.
26 These strategies exposed in 2010-2012 by the real estate developers during the interviews are confirmed by the recent moves within Châteaucreux. Over the last two years, three new property programmes have been launched: all of them are led by developers who already completed a programme in Châteaucreux in the last past years. The Medic Centre is developed by Bouygues Immobilier – which is arguably linked in some way with the fact that one of the Bouygues branches, Cirmad, completed the CN- CESU in 2012 and comes back to Châteaucreux to build the “Îlot F”. As for the former Casino Headquarters (22/24 rue de la Montat), the main partner is Vinci, already involved in the “Îlot Poste-Weiss”.
27 Real estate developers thus seem to follow a sort of routine34, coming back to the same places: this may indicate that a relationship of trust and reliability has been built between the developers and the EPA35, which helps to offset the initial risk taken when engaging a new programme in Saint-Etienne. As shown in other public agency-led mega-projects, the EPA and the elected officials play an important role to attract and negotiate with real estate developers or investors (Bertoncello, Dubois, 2010; Delage, 2013). The real estate developers I met almost all acknowledged the EPA for being a unique public representative, thus facilitating the process. They clearly highlighted how reassuring this public actor was for them36, especially when the EPA was bringing a unique end-user such as the CESU37 or phasing the launching of programmes not to have too many offers available at the same time.
28 This overview thus brings to light the fact that most of the real estate developers at work in Châteaucreux are totally embedded in the financial system and have to comply with the risk-limiting rules of global finance. As the mental maps they designed of the area clearly show38, they also may have limited knowledge of the local characteristics – their office being in Lyons, they may commute only to visit their construction site. But when they are developing a second programme, they presumably capitalize on their first experience and deepen their knowledge of the area.
29 The next section investigates whether, considering their initial weak link with Châteaucreux, developers chose this location for the area characteristics, the HSR as a whole, or specific features of the HSR station.
Real estate developers and the HSR station: from use value to exchange value
30 Public authorities designed the new district to be built next to the HSR station as a business/service-oriented district – as some of them implicitly admitted, they copy- pasted what was implemented in larger cities in order Saint-Etienne not to be “left behind” 39. Their original goal was to compete with Lyons Part-Dieu, France’s second largest CBD after Paris-La Défense. Their argument was to say that a 40-minute train ride would enable companies to afford larger and more up-to-date offices as the prices would be lower in Saint-Etienne than in Lyons. As a matter of fact this argument found
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some echo among the real estate developers I interviewed. Four out of five agreed that if the Châteaucreux station had not been serviced by a high-speed train, they would not have considered a programme in this area as an option at all. They actually rely on their experience in other (larger) cities and build the following equation up: “business district = TGV station district”. However we acknowledge this argument is more a belief than a proven fact, as the following paragraphs show.
31 What, precisely, in the station is attractive to real estate developers when deciding to bid on a public call for tenders in Châteaucreux? There are two sets of answers, both matching with the node-place model established by Bertolini (1996): factors related to the transportation infrastructure itself, and factors related to its position in the city fabric.
The transportation-related arguments
32 When asked what precisely in the TGV station was so crucial, the real estate developers all said the accessibility was a prime argument to define the value of a plot of land. Not only the TGV is a direct link to Paris, but also the many TER (regional express trains) are a commuting facility with Lyons. Comparing TGV and TER services highlights that the TER service is the actual major asset of the station (Table 3) thanks the introduction of the fixed-interval timetable (as frequently as every 10 minutes at rush hours). In comparison, the TGV has a limited service: it is not running at a high speed between Lyons and Saint-Etienne, it has only 4 trains (round trip) a day and connects Saint- Etienne to a limited number of destinations, being a dead-end station (Figure 3).
Table 3. Regional and high-speed train service at Châteaucreux station, as of September 2015.
Data collected by the author, from the SNCF and TER websites
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Figure 3. The 2015 France’s HSR network.
Source: adapted from Wikipedia Commons
33 However, real estate developers consider the TGV as an asset for business purpose, as it provides a direct service to Paris, the capital city of a still monocentric France. The first train arrives in Paris at 9 am and the last train leaves Paris at 7 pm: it allows a round- trip journey on the same day, which saves the additional cost of a night in a hotel. Conversely, the first train from Paris arrives in Saint-Etienne before 10 am and the last train leaves Châteaucreux station after 6 pm, which also enables a round trip journey on a day from Paris. From a business point of view, the high-speed connectivity then makes up for the distance, as it provides a direct and rather fast service between Saint- Etienne and France’s major financial centre.
34 Besides the train station, the multimodal hub is also appealing to real estate developers, especially from a resident’s or a visitor’s point of view. They all pay tribute to the improvement of the overall connectivity of the train station to the rest of the city bus network – they thus appreciate the action taken by public stakeholders a few years before. When the decision was made to regenerate the area, transportation experts put into the light the fact that the central train station was not well connected to the city’s major places. The urban bus map actually needed a substantial overhaul to turn the central station into a major local transportation node. As a result, Châteaucreux station is now the main hub in the metro area, where a light-train line, major city bus lines, and regional bus lines are all connected (see Figure 2). This is a great asset for both office and residential buildings, as customers or residents are likely to use mass transit to go to work (if their office is in the Châteaucreux area) or go back home (if they live in the Châteaucreux area).
35 However, the real estate developers’ discourse about connectivity may be paradoxical, or may vary according to their targets. They typically tend to emphasize the
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(admittedly poor) TGV service and minimize the genuine transportation asset of the station, i.e. the TER (the TER service between Saint-Etienne and Lyons is close to the standard of the express commuting system in the Greater Paris, namely the RER). Indeed, since high speed is often associated with the myth of modernity (Klein, 2001; Belot, 2015), the symbolic value of the TGV is higher than the TER’s: the TGV passenger is often associated with the image of the modern business man when the TER passenger is not. Regarding the investors’ rationales, the TGV is also a kind of universal reference. One of the real estate developers explained us how difficult it was to draw international investors’ attention over programmes in Saint-Etienne. As he put it, either they do not know Saint-Etienne and they are reluctant to consider it as an option, or they know little about the city (mostly the clichés of a “black city”) and they are reluctant to engage action in a city with such a poor reputation. In both cases they refuse to take any risk by investing there. But, in the course of the negotiation, as the real estate developer unfolds the characteristics of the programme he is in charge of, mentioning the TGV will raise the interest of the investor40. That is because, even if he is not from the region, nor from France, the investor will certainly know what a TGV is, and most of the time will associate it with a business district. It seems that the branding effect of the TGV – quite obvious in Saint-Etienne in so long as there is no high-speed service until Lyons – must not be minimized when foreign investors are concerned. As another real estate developer put it, the investors know very little about France: they would be able to mention Paris of course, the French Riviera most of the time, perhaps Lyons41. Correlatively they are more likely to invest in places they know than in less known – and less prestigious – places such as Saint-Etienne. In other words, the less an investor knows a place, the unlikeliest he is to invest in it. As a consequence, the TGV brings some familiar colour to a city that is not familiar to the investor. Even if representations are not the only driving forces to make a decision, it is quite obvious that the mental images and the mental maps are still crucial in the process. They play a role that is important – hard to measure though. Those mental images are spreading through the real estate world and eventually become a doxa, that is to say some statements that are taken for granted by the real estate developers and the investors, no matter they are true ones or misconceptions. As such, these common beliefs potentially play a role in decision making.
36 The top-list quality of the HSR station thus lies in its connectivity to Paris, but the TGV (outside a high-speed line) is a two-side asset. The TGV certainly has a prime branding effect on decision making from a real-estate developer’s (and investor’s) point of view. It is part of an international standard. But its actual value comes from the connection it provides with places at national (TGV), regional (TER) and local (buses) scales, which is an asset from a user’s point of view.
The urbanity-related arguments
37 When asked about other reasons why they came to Châteaucreux, real estate developers identify another set of arguments, related to the urban characteristics of the area.
38 First, they all put a major emphasis on the address of their building. It is important to them to be immediately highly visible from the station when the business man is exiting the station concourse, which means the building is easy to see, easy to find
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(which avoids a loss of time). Prime locations are located in the streets with direct access to the station plaza (cf. Figure 2). It is important that the building’s address is well known, especially when the street has a name as prestigious as “Esplanade de France”, which might refer to the “Esplanade” (large plaza) in the heart of la Défense (Paris’ Central Business District).
39 Second, they also value the proximity of the city centre and its many shops and restaurants. Office employees might want to go shopping during their lunch time: they will be able to do so within a ten-minute walk or a five-minute ride. Residents might also seek the urban thriving lifestyle within walking distance. Those urban characteristics are a legacy of urban history: when train stations were built in the 19th century, they were built on the outskirts of the then urban core. Afterwards, they were embedded in the urban fabric when cities grew at a fast pace. As a consequence, the central stations now take advantage of the historic centre’s proximity, all the more since city centres have been desirable again for a few years (Bidou-Zachariasen, 2003).
40 Last but not least, as a former industrial district, the central station area provides not only a big amount of available land (former industrial wastelands), but also large tenements, which facilitates large – and possibly more profitable developments.
A multi-facetted asset: the high-speed rail station as an all-risk insurance
41 As the previous sections show, the real estate developers put forward a number of arguments where the HSR station plays direct and indirect roles in the choices they make (those arguments echo the ones put forward by the investors and the bankers, as they said during the interviews). The HSR is thus necessary to engage in a programme in such a weak market as Saint-Etienne. Not only does the station provide excellent connectivity assets, but also some urban assets. It is connecting local, regional and national scale, which increases the value of the land that is available in large tenements close to the city centre (see Figure 4). If accessibility is always put as a top-list argument, real estate developers actually do not need to make a hierarchy of these elements, since those features are inextricably linked in a central HSR station area, by the very nature and history of it.
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Figure 4. A multi-facetted object, the high-speed rail station as an all-risk insurance.
Made by the author
42 This wide array of assets provided by the HSR station and its area is exactly what brings some reassuring arguments to real-estate developers (and investors). In the same way Veltz (1996) showed how the diversity of skilled professionals and of potential activities or outlets provided an all-risk insurance to companies located in global cities, we could say that the centrally-located HSR station provides an all-risk insurance to real-estate developers thanks to its many potential uses. This can be true not only because of the variety of assets the HSR station has, but also because it can be called up at various steps of the property programme decision process.
43 First, the more assets the place provides, the likelier the people will consider the place as a profitable investment or a potential place to move in. In the same way the high- speed rail station physically connects many spatial scales, it also connects stakeholders from many decision-making scales (end-users, bankers, foreign investors, etc.). It is then an excellent means to align the action of place-based and place-less (market- driven) stakeholders with whom real estate developers have to deal with42. In other words, at least one of the various angles of the HSR station may speak to each stakeholder – either the actual use value of the station, especially for commuters, or the exchange value provided by the branding effect of the TGV for the globalized investors.
44 Second, when the HSR station helps to convince the different stakeholders of a property programme, it actually makes easier each step of the implementation of the project. The HSR station first helps to attract real estate developers to consider the area as a possible prospect. Once they have decided to take action or once they have won the bid, the real estate developers need to convince both banks to back their programme, and, most importantly, investors. Those investors may be end users (the owner lives in
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the housing unit or works in the office space). They may also be individuals or corporations seeking a safe way to invest their savings – they are looking for a profitable investment. When trying to convince their bank, the real estate developers build their case by presenting the potential of the area, and, more importantly, the percentage of the building that is already sold to end-users or investors. The highest the percentage is, the safest the programme is; but the riskiest the area is, the highest the required percentage of units sold in advance is. According to whom they are negotiating with, real estate developers will put forward different sides of the HSR station and adapt their argumentation to the demands of the person they are speaking to: accessibility and urbanity or centrality of the area when talking to end-users, the TGV brand when trying to convince (foreign) investors. The HSR station is then necessary – but not sufficient – to convince each stakeholder to come and buy a piece of the property programme. More precisely, each aspect of the HSR station (and its area) would not be sufficient alone to convince them: it is the combination in the same place of material and immaterial assets, of connectivity, centrality, urbanity and branding effect that makes the whole property programme possible.
45 Last but not least, this wide array of assets is reinforced by the action of public stakeholders: prior to any real estate developer action, the HSR station helps to focus local public action on a deprived area, where elected officials decide to launch an ambitious project, even a mega-project (Figure 4). This public frame adds another layer of security to the property programmes that are proposed in that development zone, especially when public authorities are backed by state agencies providing money and technical assistance, such as the EPA in Saint-Etienne.
46 The HSR station is thus crucial to engage private driven action in risky cities by contributing to overcome each sticking point in the process of constructing a building. In other words, it plays a major role thanks to an accumulation of minor successes built upon the HSR station’s material and immaterial assets, playing both on short and long terms. To some extent, this efficiency eventually relies on the (good) image spread by opinion leaders in the financial world.
Conclusion: Real estate development around an HSR station: a “cautious-man principle” or a self-fulfilling prophecy in shrinking cities?
47 The key results of this research work highlight the variety of arguments that can attract real-estate developers to engage in a programme next to any HSR station. First, the node-place model (Bertolini, 1996) of the HSR station provides a wide array of assets – national to local accessibility, centrality, urbanity, and large plots of lands. Since those various aspects are inextricably linked to the nature of the central HSR station, the HSR station has more value as a whole than the simple sum of every feature alone. This explains why the HSR station as a whole is a risk-limiting asset in a project, even in a city that has a weak market. Aware of this potential uses, real-estate developers thus consider investing near an HSR station as in accordance with the “cautious-man” principle43: it helps to equalize the risk taken when engaging in a programme in a city with a poor reputation as Saint-Etienne.
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48 Second, if we take seriously the real estate developers unanimous statement according to which “if there is no HSR station, they won’t come”, we understand that the HSR station literally becomes a trigger point to engage in action in a shrinking city. It helps to reach a key turning point in the public and private efforts to develop a place. As the developer has to convince many stakeholders, he uses the HSR station as a resource to find the most relevant argument to get the person’s agreement. As such, the HSR station does a little bit more than just “magnifying existing trends” in terms of local development, as it is often put forward (cf. Offner, 2014): it actually allows to revert the trend thanks to the accumulation of small steps (small trigger points) that contribute to overcoming each sticking point in the process of constructing a new property programme in a supposedly risky place. It eventually allows bringing some cities (or at least some districts) back in the market, provided some snow-ball effect occurs: when a programme has proven to be profitable next to the HSR station, real-estate developers come back and routinize their action. This capacity to break the vicious circle of a bad economic situation – and of a bad reputation – is built upon a voluntarist discourse of the public stakeholders, who not only align with private stakeholders expectations, but also enhance the stability of the place. In a way, this might be read as a shared self- fulfilling prophecy 44 (Merton, 1948): even if there are no proven structuring effects of the HSR station, public and private stakeholders still believe there are some and thus focus their action and investment in that one place.
49 But the Châteaucreux case study clearly shows that this trigger-point role is still influenced – if not determined – by the general context. The HSR was not sufficient to spur action in the 1980s when the city was facing many difficulties. It became a necessity to use it as an argument two decades later, not the city to be left behind in the context of urban competition, when the HSR became a consensually acclaimed and highly desirable feature, and when other cities were accordingly playing the HSR card.
50 Third, the fact that many of the real-estate developers are embedded in the financial world and have to comply with strict risk-limiting rules leads to question the city, or the piece of city that is actually produced. If the HSR station was actually a trigger point to enable new buildings to be built, we can wonder to which extent this offer – somewhat standardised – will meet the local needs in the long run. A deeper analysis of the use of those buildings over time (rate of occupancy, turn over, type of end-user…) would help to assess the relevance of using the HSR as a trigger point in shrinking cities. To which extent is this market-led and seemingly effective in the short term strategy somewhat artificial and short-sighted in the long term?
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NOTES
1. In French, “un projet de territoire”: this phrase describes an urban or a regional development plan, which also aims at strengthening the sense of place. 2. Laboratoire d’Economie des Transports (LET) is a research unit based in Lyons which is specialised in transport economics. Researchers working there monitored the effects of the creation of an HSR service between Lyons and Paris. 3. However, their recent survey reveals that the HSR is still not the number one location factor for private companies, but that it actually climbed up the hierarchy of location factors in only a few years (Bazin et al, 2016). 4. Th. Theurillat refers to the anchoring of the capital in a local context thanks to a twofold negotiation led by the developers: with the global investors on the one hand, with the local society on the other hand (Theurillat, 2011). 5. In the real estate world, a “prime” location is defined by its accessibility (by road, by mass transit) and the quality of the building (new, modern, convenient and up-to-date design). 6. Which reveals a new trend in office buildings’ location: historically located in city centres, office buildings moved to peripheral urban areas in the 1990s (Crouzet, 2001). They are now back in city centres, not in the historical core but in new business districts, often in the vicinity of a central train station. 7. Historically, the image of central station areas is twofold: modernity and marginality. At the time stations were built, steel frame and glass walls were fine examples of the most advanced techniques. But train stations soon became the focal point of an underworld (traffics, prostitution), hence a bad reputation attached to most of train station areas in French (and European) major cities. 8. Max Rousseau defines a “loser/losing city” as a city suffering from both objective (high unemployment rate, poverty…) and subjective (bad image spread by opinion leaders and prescribers) difficulties. 9. Train à Grande Vitesse – literally “high-speed train”. The first TGV service was inaugurated in 1981; it linked Paris to Lyons in two hours, instead of four hours on a regular train. As it was a great success, the high speed network was expanded to Lille and Brittany in the 1990s, to Marseille in the early 2000s and to the eastern part of France in the late 2000s. But the French “TGV” is also able to run on regular tracks. 10. The TGV service to Châteaucreux station was actually a kind of favour to the then French Minister of Transportation who was born and raised in Saint-Etienne. As a consequence, Saint- Etienne differs from many cities that strove hard to get an HSR stop along a new high speed line under construction. 11. Cirmad Grand Sud (Bouygues), Altarea Cogedim, Art de Construire, BNP Paribas Real Estate and XXL-Ateliers. The interviews were conducted between January 2010 and March 2012. 12. Interviewing a real estate developer means getting access to the opinion of the various people he is in touch with. It is then a good way to make up with the difficulty to reach some private stakeholders, such as private investors or the numerous end-users. 13. I interviewed the head of Nexity Villes et Projets (2009); the head of Bouwfonds Marignan Lyons (2011); the former head of the professional organisation of developers and builders (Fédération nationale des Promoteurs Constructeurs) in 2010. I also interviewed four real estate agents
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in Saint-Etienne, one of them being a specialist of tertiary real estate in the region (GIT- Immobilier). 14. Especially the website of the public agency in charge of the regeneration of the area – Etablissement Public d’Aménagement de Saint-Etienne: http://www.epase.fr/fr/Projets-urbains/ Chateaucreux/Presentation and the website targeting private investors in office buildings: http://saint-etienne-chateaucreux.fr/. 15. 199 396 inhabitants in 1990, 180 438 in 1999.There used to be 223 223 inhabitants in Saint- Etienne in 1968. Source: Population Census – INSEE (French Census Bureau). 16. In 2008, the rate of unemployment was as high as 15,7% in Saint-Etienne when it reached 11,6% in France. The households’ average income was 19 193 euros in Saint-Etienne when it was 23 242 euros in France. The situation was even worst in the Châteaucreux ward (15 285 euros). Source: Population Census, 2008 – INSEE. 17. This might be read as a commonplace strategy implemented in the 2000s by many cities facing deindustrialization (Florida, 2002). But in Saint-Etienne, this turn is also built upon a very broad definition of design (Cunningham-Sabot, Roth, 2014) and a genuine local industrial legacy and tradition in innovation. The City actually tried to turn traditional local skills of industrial design into more up-to-date design industry. For example, the School of Architecture was renamed “School of Architecture and design” to record that move. As a token of this turn, Saint- Etienne was the first French city to belong to the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (2010). But this strategy is problematic given the limited local resources of Saint-Etienne, compared to other “creative cities” that are at least regional capitals (Cunningham-Sabot, Roth, 2014). 18. A « Zone d’Aménagement Concerté » (ZAC) is a comprehensive planning area defined by local public authorities where specific rules and taxes apply. It is thought to be a lever for urban planning. 19. The « Établissement Public d’Aménagement de Saint-Etienne » (EPASE) was created by the Central State in 2007, at the request of the Mayor. This public planning agency brings technical expertise and public money (2007-2014: 120 M €; 2015-2020: 80 M €; half of that money comes from the Central State, half of it comes from local authorities) to carry on the urban regeneration of Saint-Etienne. Five areas were set to focus action in the city, among which Châteaucreux. The creation of such an agency is “something exceptional, reserved for spaces with big challenges; it demonstrates the importance the State is giving to Saint-Etienne’s evolution.” (Cunningham- Sabot, Roth, 2014, p 112). 20. Source: L’Express n°3034, 27 août-02 septembre 2009. A French magazine, L’Express publishes annual real estate figures based on the PERVAL official database. According to the real estate agent who is interviewed in this article, the 2008 crisis did not lead to a significant price drop (- 0,3%) as the prices were already very low compared to other cities. However, the 2008 crisis lead to a significant drop in the volume of the housing units being sold (-20%), as the owners would rather not sell than cut an already low price. 21. Source: Le Nouvel Observateur, n°2338, 27 août-02 septembre 2009. 22. 10,4% in Saint-Etienne in 2008 (12,7% in the Châteaucreux district); 6,3% in Region Rhône- Alpes, 6,7% in France (source: INSEE). 23. This is still true in 2015, cf. the figures regularly updated by this nationwide real estate agency: http://www.efficity.com/prix-immobiliers/france_z111161/#6.00/46.907/1.662. Saint- Etienne appears in green, corresponding to the lowest range of prices. 24. Source: GIT Immobilier, a local real estate agency specialized in commercial properties that publishes annual reports on the real estate market of office buildings in the Saint-Etienne region. I also interviewed its sales manager in 2011. 25. Source: Saint-Etienne: GIT; Lyons and Grenoble: CBRE, 2011, available at http://www.cbre.eu/ portal/pls/portal/res_rep.show_report?report_id=542.
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26. Source: EPASE, based upon CBRE, DTZ and Keops reports (2014). Available at http:// www.epase.fr/sites/default/files/ La%20cr%C3%87ativit%C3%87%20au%20service%20des%20entreprises.pdf 27. Source: interview with the head of the Lyons agency of a major national real estate developer, 21.02.2011. 28. This developer has been particularly involved in the Confluence regeneration project in Lyons, where the Cardinal Group built one of the first buildings (namely its headquarters). 29. This implicit demand was especially strong on the Luminis programme – hence the yellow snake-like building designed by Manuelle Gautrand (source: interviews at Altarea, 17.02.2010 and 18.02.2010). 30. As the first project failed, the EPASE had to organise a new call for tenders, won by another team not including Jean Nouvel. 31. Source: interview 20.01.2010. 32. Cap Design was a 47 housing unit programme led by BNP Paribas in the vicinity of the Imperial Arms Factory. 33. The area also qualifies for another tax exemption programme, since it is in the vicinity of a specific urban renewal perimeter (“Quartier Politique de la Ville”), where the VAT rate is set at 5,5% (instead of 19,6%). 34. My acknowledgments go to the reviewer who highlighted that point. 35. However, since the French public procurement code prohibits any form of favouritism, this routine may apply to the real estate developers’ strategy only. 36. The survey led in Rheims in 2014 underlines the same reassuring role of public authorities (Bazin et al., 2016). 37. The CN-CESU (Centre National du Chèque Emploi Service Universel) is a public office building where a specific public policy helping households to employ other people in the caring profession is managed at a national scale. 38. Each stakeholder I interviewed had to design his/her mental map of “the Châteaucreux area”. Even if the analysis of a mental map is hindered by the technical ability to design, it shows that the most detailed mental maps I got were those of Saint-Etienne native stakeholders. 39. Source: especially two administrative heads of Saint-Etienne Métropole, the intercommunal body (28.08.2008; 19.02.2010). 40. Source: interview of a real-estate developer (18.02.2010). 41. Source: interview of a real-estate developer (02.03.2012). 42. This is quite similar to what has been shown about the importance of words in communication studies: by using the same general word, and giving a different definition to the same word, various stakeholders can circumvent their initial misunderstanding and eventually make a decision (Sfez, 1973). 43. As heard during a semi-structured interview with a real estate developer in Brussels. 44. The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true (Merton, 1948, p. 195).
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ABSTRACTS
Based upon a case-study in a post-industrial city (Saint-Etienne, France), this paper discusses the relationship between a central high-speed rail (HSR) station and urban regeneration in shrinking cities. Thanks to a qualitative approach, it analyses what precisely in an HSR station is attractive to real estate developers in a reputedly unattractive city. The outcome of this survey is that the HSR station is a multi-facetted asset that helps to convince every private stakeholder the real estate developer has to deal with. The central HSR station is a three-fold asset thanks to its connectivity, urbanity and centrality qualities, but also thanks to the branding effect of the HSR itself in France. The value of the station as a whole exceeds the sum of the values of its sides. The HSR station is then a necessary – although not sufficient – condition to engage real estate action in cities with a poor reputation as it helps to equalize the risk taken by private stakeholders in places they would not have considered as an option otherwise.
A partir d’une étude de cas menée dans une ville post-industrielle (Saint-Etienne, France), cet article aborde les relations entre une gare TGV de centre-ville et les projets de renouvellement urbain, dans les villes en décroissance. Qu’est-ce qui, précisément, dans la gare TGV, constitue un argument propice à attirer les promoteurs immobiliers dans une ville réputée peu attractive ? Cette enquête qualitative montre que la gare est un objet pluriel dont la multiplicité des atouts permet d’emporter l’adhésion de chacun des acteurs privés avec lesquels les promoteurs doivent négocier. Parmi ces qualités, celles de connexité et de contiguïté (urbanité, centralité) jouent un rôle particulièrement important, ce à quoi s’ajoute l’image de marque positive du TGV en France. La valeur de la gare comme un tout excède la simple somme des atouts cumulés. La gare TGV est donc une condition nécessaire – mais non suffisante – pour engager un projet immobilier dans des villes souffrant d’une mauvaise réputation. Elle permet une péréquation du risque pris par les acteurs privés dans des endroits qu’ils n’auraient autrement pas prospectés.
INDEX
Keywords: central HSR station, real estate developers, urban regeneration, land value, Saint- Etienne Mots-clés: gare TGV de centre-ville, promotion immobilière, renouvellement urbain, création de valeur, Saint-Etienne
AUTHOR
AURÉLIE DELAGE Maître de conférences, Université de Perpignan Via Domitia, [email protected]
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Measuring the influence of the Camp de Tarragona high-speed rail station on first-time and repeat tourists visiting a coastal destination Measuring the influence of the Camp de Tarragona high-speed rail station on first-time and repeat tourists visiting a coastal destination
Òscar Saladié, Salvador Anton Clavé and Aaron Gutiérrez
This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Project MOVETUR CSO2014-51785-R)
Introduction
1 Transport infrastructures play a key role in the development of tourist destinations. This has been studied especially, for instance, in the case of air transport and the role of low-cost carriers and airports (Bieger and Wittmer, 2006; Quintiliani, 2009; Castillo- Manzano et al., 2011). More recently, analyses on the links between HSR and tourism have emerged. In some cases, the approach is performed in a prospective manner, such as the analysis by Masson and Petitot (2009) of the role that the HSR route between Perpignan (France) and Barcelona (Spain) could play in attracting tourists to these two cities, or Becker and George’s (2011) study of the potential for tourism development of the proposed HSR Gulf Coast Corridor in the United States. Ex-post evidence of tourism development related to HSR, especially urban tourism, is found in Ureña et al. (2009), Bazin et al. (2010), Garmendia et al. (2012), Wang et al. (2012), Delaplace et al. (2014), Yin et al. (2014), and Pagliara et al. (2015) in countries such as China, France, Italy, and Spain.
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2 According to Albalate and Bel (2011), passenger transport by HSR is not generating significant additional economic activity or attracting productive investment except in the service sector and in tourism. Nevertheless, Hernández and Jiménez (2014) demonstrate that local revenues improve in municipalities located within 5 km of an HSR station. In any case, it seems to be generally acknowledged that high-speed rail services are experiencing a process of diversification in terms of travel motivations and passenger profiles (Santos et al., 2007; Garmendia et al., 2011; Delaplace et al., 2014). Within this context, there is no doubt that the use of HSR for tourism and leisure travel can be considered still an emerging issue of interest despite its importance was highlighted more than a decade ago (Bazin et al., 2004).
3 The factors influencing tourists’ destination choices have been analysed in academic literature, and several models have been developed, as in Um and Crompton (1991) where three sets of variables are taken into account: external inputs (as transportation), internal inputs, and cognitive constructs. Decrop (1999) performed a comprehensive review of these models in order to analyse tourists’ decision-making and behaviour processes. Transportation, understood as the mode used to arrive at a destination, is included as one of the major specific factors in decision-making in Decrop and Snelders (2004). To the best of the authors’ knowledge, only a few studies have analysed the influence of the existence of an HSR station on tourists’ decisions to visit particular destinations. Two of these correspond to work by Delaplace et al. (2014) and Pagliara et al. (2015). In both cases, the results were obtained by means of a survey of tourists. In the first case, the tourists were arriving in Paris and Rome, and in the second case in Madrid. All respondents had travelled not only by HSR but also by plane, automobile, and other transport modes. Delaplace et al. (2014) concluded that 49% of tourists who arrived in Paris by means of HSR and 28% in Rome were positively influenced in their choice of destination by the presence of the HSR. Meanwhile, Pagliara et al. (2015) asked all the tourists interviewed about their three primary motivations for choosing Madrid as a destination. Only 0.8% indicated HSR availability as their first choice, but it must be highlighted that only 12.8% arrived in Madrid by means of HSR.
4 In this same vein, Anton Clavé et al. (2015) analysed the influence exerted by an HSR station on tourists’ destination choices. The case study destination was Costa Daurada, a mature coastal destination located in Southern Catalonia, Spain. The authors adopt a causal probabilistic method theoretically presented and developed by Young et al. (2005) and referred to as a causal chain approach. This allows the study of the effect that the exposure to certain information/products/services (the availability of an HSR station close to a tourist destination) may have on the decision for its consumption (to visit the destination). The result is obtained neither by means of a binary answer (yes or no) to the question about the influence of the HSR station, as in the case of Delaplace et al. (2014), nor by means of choosing a reason among a set of possible responses, as in the case of Pagliara et al. (2015). This methodology has been also applied by Fernandez- Young and Young (2008) in the context of film tourism; by Pratt et al. (2010) in the context of the evaluation of the effectiveness of tourism-marketing campaigns; by Young et al. (2010) in the context of cultural tourism in market towns; by Saladié et al. (2014) and Anton Clavé et al. (2015) in the evaluation of the influence exerted by the availability of low-cost flight routes on tourists’ destination choices; and by Saladié and
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Santos-Lacueva (2016) to measure the improvement in the separate collection of household waste attributable to an awareness campaign.
5 It is acknowledged that the increase in the probability of visiting a destination because of the availability of HSR services can vary depending on the sociodemographic and trip characteristics of visitors (Anton Clavé et al., 2015). A key factor, from the destination perspective, is the concentration of repeat tourists. They exhibit differences to first-time visitors (Gitelson and Crompton, 1984; Oppermann, 1997; Fallon and Schofield, 2004; Kemperman et al., 2004; Lehto et al., 2004; Alegre and Juaneda, 2006), and the efforts required to attract them are lower than those required for first-time visitors (Oppermann, 1998) Repeat visitors have traditionally been considered a positive indication of tourist satisfaction. However, after a comprehensive review, Alegre and Cladera (2006) conclude that repeat visitation can be a result of other reasons: (I) alternative destinations are not perceived as different; (II) destination choice is made by inertia or routine; (III) a sense of place attachment; and (IV) repeat visitation will avoid a potential bad experience in a new destination. Otherwise, first- time visitors can visit a destination because it has been recommended by repeat visitors (Pritchard, 2003).
6 In this context, the main goal of this paper is to analyse the influence exercised by Camp de Tarragona’s HSR station on tourists’ destination choices amongst HSR users, taking into account whether it was their first visit to Costa Daurada or not; we call these two groups first-time tourists and repeat tourists. A second objective is to analyse the differences in socio-demographic profiles of the two segments.
7 The rest of the article is organised in the following manner. The second section presents the area of study; the third section is devoted to describing the data and the methodology; the fourth section presents the results and the discussion; and the final section offers the main conclusions.
Area of study
8 Costa Daurada, in Tarragona Province, is one of the most important tourist destinations in Catalonia, enjoying a mild climate and beaches with fine sand and clear water. Salou is the primary and best-known destination within this area and is located 100 km south of Barcelona. Salou, along with Cambrils and Vila-seca, form the so-called Central Costa Daurada, with more than 90,000 permanent residents in 2014. This area is included in the urban area of Tarragona, where the cities of Tarragona and Reus have the largest populations (132,000 and 105,000 inhabitants in 2014, respectively). There is no doubt about the importance of tourism in this area, with 22.4 km of coastline (including 14.1 km of beaches) and tourism supported by hotels, campsites, and 120,000 registered tourist apartments. The Port Aventura theme park, established in the area in 1995, is currently among the largest theme parks in Europe, having reached a peak of four million visitors in 2007 (Anton Clavé, 2010). In 2014, 3.5 million people visited the park (Rubin, 2015).
9 Costa Daurada hosted more than four million tourists in 2014. According to the surveys of tourists conducted by the Costa Daurada Tourism Studies Foundation, 57% were from Spain and 43% were foreigners. Most of them (59%) arrived in Costa Daurada by means of private automobile, while 26% arrived by plane, 7% by bus, 5% by train (including HSR), and 3% by other modes of transportation. Taking into account the type of
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accommodation selected, 41% of these tourists stay in hotels, 18% in rented apartments, 33% in second homes, and 8% in campsites.
10 Many regions of Spain, as well as the French border, are extremely well connected to Costa Daurada by the AP-7 motorway. Furthermore, the AP-2 motorway connects Costa Daurada with the interior Northwest regions and with Madrid (Figure 1). These two motorways are highly significant as means of arrival for international and domestic tourists, some of whom, due to the distance, arrive in Catalonia by plane, using the Barcelona or Reus airports. Since 2007, tourists have had the option of arriving via the Camp de Tarragona HSR station, which is an intermediate node of the HSR line Madrid- Barcelona-French border.
Figure 1. Area of study.
Source: Author’s own elaboration
11 The Camp de Tarragona is a peripheral HSR station located approximately 20 km from many of the important destinations on the coast, as well as 14 km from Tarragona and 17 km from Reus. The main HSR services in the station are the AVE trains connecting with Barcelona and the French border (northbound), Zaragoza and Madrid. In addition to these long-distance trains, the station is also connected with the rest of the Catalan HSR stations (Lleida, Barcelona, Girona and Figueres) through medium-distance HSR trains (AVANT). Moreover, direct AVE trains connecting the Catalonia and Andalusia stations (bypassing Madrid station) provide services to this station. In addition to all these HSR trains, ALVIA trains (which combine HSR and conventional services) connect Camp de Tarragona with stations on the North-west side of the Ebro Corridor (Logroño, Pamplona and Bilbao, among others).
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Table 1. Main railway services at Camp de Tarragona station (number of daily trains)
Distance Travel time AVANT ALVIA/Intercity AVE trains (km) (hours:min) trains trains1
Barcelona 100 00:40 15 7 8
Zaragoza 240 01:10 16 5
Madrid 550 02:30 11
Córdoba-Sevilla- 870 - 1020 - 04:10 - 04:50 - 5 (9) - 3 (6) -
Málaga2 1025 05:15 2 (4)
Logroño- 410 - 415 - 03:15 - 03:15 - 3 - 5 - 3 Pamplona-Bilbao 535 06:00
12 Source: Author’s own elaboration based on Renfe web page timetables (last access: 04/05/2016)
13 The Camp de Tarragona HSR station is connected by bus to Tarragona City, Reus, Valls, Cambrils, Salou, and La Pineda. In addition, the HSR station is linked by taxi service with the aforementioned towns as well as others. Regarding the last three tourist destinations, the frequency of bus service is concentrated in the summer season. Nevertheless, there is limited connectivity with the regional public-transport network, therefore affecting its accessibility (Gutiérrez, 2010) in a similar way to other peripheral stations (Facchinetti-Mannone, 2005; Ribalaygua, 2006; Bellet and Gutiérrez, 2011). The decentralized and sprawling distribution of population and activities in this region also increases the difficulty of integrating the station within a polycentric territorial structure.
14 Nevertheless, despite the station’s poor accessibility, it has become the eighth-most frequented in Spain’s HSR network, and it is clearly the first peripheral station in terms of passengers (more than 730,000 in 2013). Although only 3% of visitors to this area arrive via HSR services, according to previously mentioned surveys, this volume has been increasing during recent years (in 2010, it was less than 1.5%). Otherwise, the distribution of this volume of passengers by trimesters shows a relevant specificity for the station: its highest number of passengers is achieved in summer. This is the opposite of what is happening in the whole of the Spanish HSR network, which suffers a decrease in passengers during the summer. This data is explained, as mentioned, by the relative proximity of the station to the Central Costa Daurada area and the role that it plays among tourists arriving to the area using HSR services.
Data and methodology
15 A survey of 1,225 passengers was conducted in 2014 between 13 July and 24 August at Camp de Tarragona HSR station. Taking into account the total number of passengers using the station during the same period in 2013, according to data supplied by RENFE
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(the Spanish rail company), the survey had a 95.5% confidence level with a margin of error of 5%. The data used for the analysis presented here corresponds to the 574 Spanish tourists in the whole sample who were returning home after having completed their holidays in the main locations of Costa Daurada. We have eliminated responses from passengers whose reason for travelling was any of the following: not on holidays; they were just arriving at the station; they were not from Spain; they did not spend the holidays in Costa Daurada; they did not answer the causal questions; and/or they did not answer the question about whether this was their first visit to the destination. The survey included a wide range of socio-demographic questions. Tourists were asked to provide information including their age, gender, Spanish region of residence, the number of days before departure they decided on the trip, whether they arranged their own booking or used a travel agency, size of group, group structure, destination in Costa Daurada, type of accommodation, first-time visit to the destination or not, length of stay, and educational level.
16 The survey included two scale questions on which the methodology proposed for this paper is based (Young et al., 2005). These two questions allow an assessment of the influence exerted by Camp de Tarragona HSR station on decisions by first-time and repeat tourists, all them HSR users, to visit Costa Daurada.
17 The existence of an HSR station near a tourist destination may be a reason for visiting that destination. Nevertheless, a cause (the existence of an HSR station) is not necessary for the decision to visit a destination since there are alternative modes of transportation available. At the same time, the existence of the HSR station is not sufficient for a visit because many potential visitors will choose not to make the visit despite its existence. The decision to visit a particular destination is the result of an aggregation of fractional effects of several causes. The existence of an HSR station adds an additional logical string of events that can lead to visiting a destination, but as stated above, it does not guarantee that the visit will happen. Therefore, there must be some other event or events that also occur if the visit is to happen. Furthermore, the visit to the destination could happen regardless of the existence of the HSR station. The visit will take place if there is a completed path from the origin of events to the outcome. This concept of cause is in contrast to an “injection” model, in which a specific cause is sufficient (and perhaps even necessary) for the outcome.
18 These two types of uncertainty lead to two causal probabilities. The first is the probability of causality, or the probability that the visit (V) will take place given the cause (the existence of an HSR station or S). The second is the probability of causation, which is the probability that, but for S, V would not occur. Thus, the existence of an HSR station increases the probability of the visit being made to the destination because it adds another way for the visit to actually happen. Henceforth, Δp (equation 1) is the increase in probability of a visit to the destination, i.e., the increase in probability of the visit given the existence of an HSR station minus what the probability of a visit would have been if the HSR station did not exist.
19 Δp ≡ P(V|S) − P(V|∼S) (equation 1)
20 The two aforementioned questions used for the application of the methodology are as follows:
21 Q1. On a scale from 0 to 10, how true is it to say that you came to the destination in Costa Daurada because of the existence of the Camp de Tarragona HSR station?
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22 Q2. On a scale from 0 to 10, how true is it to say that you would have come to the destination in Costa Daurada even if there was no Camp de Tarragona HSR station?
23 The first of these questions is designed to elicit the probability of the visit being made
given the existence of the HSR station or the probability in causality (ki in equation 2). The second elicits the probability that without the HSR station, the visitor would have come to the destination anyway or the background probability of the visit being made
(1−ci). Then, ci (equation 2) is the probability that without the existence of the HSR station, there would not have been any visit (probability in causation).
24 Δpi = ki ∗ ci (equation 2) 25 These two questions solicit from the passengers the quantification of the influence level exerted by the Camp de Tarragona HSR station on the choice of destination. In Q1, 0 means no influence, and 10 means that the visit was absolutely due to the existence of the HSR station (analogous in Q2). Thus, HSR passengers can associate the influence level (lower or higher) with a value from 0 to 10. There is a wide range of combinations of answers to these two questions, although it is expected that those indicating a number close to 0 for Q1 will also answer with a number close to 10 for Q2 and vice versa. If one interviewee responds with 1 to Q1 (the influence of the HSR station in the choice of destination is very low) and 9 to Q2 (it is very likely that the visit would have taken place without the existence of the HSR station), the increase in the probability of the visit to the destination due to the existence of the HSR station is 1%. In this 3 example, ki is 0.1; 1−ci is 0.9, and therefore, ci is 0.1 (1-0.9). Hence, Δpi is 0.01. 26 The extremes of the range of responses are: a) visitors stating that the existence of the HSR station had no influence at all and that they definitely would have visited the destination anyway (k and c values equal to 0); and b) visitors stating that they would not have chosen the destination if the HSR station did not exist; thus, they resolved to book their visit due to the HSR station’s existence (k and c values equal to 1). In the first group, the HSR station does nothing at all to make the visit more likely, while in the second group, its existence raises the probability of this visit from 0 to 1.
27 In summary, Δpi (equation 2) is the fraction of the individual visit that can be ascribed to the existence of the HSR station. This allows for a measurement of the contributions of all passengers (Δp in equation 3) rather than making a binary classification of visitors. The effect of the HSR station on any group of visitors would be missed if the fractional contributions had not been investigated.
28 N Δp = ∑ i=1 (ki * ci) / N (equation 3) 29 Therefore, the main objective of this study is to determine whether or not there are differences in the increase in probability created by the availability of the Camp de Tarragona HSR station among tourists who stated it was, or was not, the first time they chose Costa Daurada as a destination. We call them, respectively, first-time tourists and repeat tourists. Previously, the differences in the profiles for each of these two groups have also been analysed. A Z-test has been applied to evaluate whether or not the differences between the two segments (first-time and repeat tourists) are statistically significant at the 5% level. We have compared the proportion or the mean obtained for both first-time tourists and repeat tourists in each one of the variables analysed.
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Results
30 Next, we present the results in order to determine the increase in probability that Costa Daurada was chosen as a tourist destination by HSR passengers because of the existence of the Camp de Tarragona HSR. Previously, profile differences between the two segments of HSR users (first-time and repeat tourists) will be shown.
How different are the two types of tourists?
31 The results show that only 65 passengers (11.3%) reported that it was the first time they had visited Costa Daurada. Meanwhile, 509 (almost 90% of the whole sample) stated that they had visited the destination at least once previously. The number of new tourists who arrived at their destination by means of the Camp de Tarragona HSR station is low. However, another 179 tourists who said that this was not their first visit to the destination also indicated that it was the first time they had used the Camp de Tarragona HSR station. Hence, more than one-third of them changed the way they arrived at their destination. On one hand, we cannot state that the Camp de Tarragona HSR station is attracting a determinate number of new tourists because they might have chosen Costa Daurada as a destination regardless of the existence of the HSR station. On the other hand, despite most of them having visited the destination previously, it could be possible that one of the reasons for their repeat visit is the existence of the Camp de Tarragona HSR station. Therefore, we want to know the role played by the HSR station in the destination choice in each one of the two aforementioned segments.
32 Table 2 shows the passengers’ distribution taking into account gender, age, the number of days before departure they decided on the trip, length of stay, method of booking the trip, and educational level. This information refers to the two segments analysed in this study, i.e., first-time tourists and repeat tourists.
33 There are no statistically significant differences in regard to gender. The data reveal that there are more women in both segments: 53.8% of first-time passengers were women who stated that they were visiting the destination for the first time, and 58.1% of repeat passengers were women who said that they had visited it previously. The average age of first-time tourists was 39 years old, and for repeat tourists, it is 42. This second group is slightly older than the first, but there is only a three-year gap, and the difference is not statistically significant. Taking into account the age thresholds defined, the distribution is very close in both segments, especially between people younger than 40 years old. The highest value (41.5%) in the case of first-time tourists is obtained in the 41–60-year-old threshold, while it is in the 26–40-year-old threshold in the case of repeat tourists (38.1%). The difference is statistically significant only in the case of people older than 60. This threshold accounts for 3.1% of first-time tourists, and it rises to 12.6% for repeat tourists. Senior tourists prefer choosing a place they already know as a holiday destination.
Table 2. Sample distribution according to socio-demographic variables (I).
Gender First-time tourists Repeat tourists
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Female 53.8% 58.1%
Male 46.2% 41.9%
Age First-time tourists Repeat tourists
Mean 39 years old 42 years old
18–25 years old 15.4% 15.4%
26–40 years old 40.0% 38.1%
41–60 years old 41.5% 33.9%
> 60 years old* 03.1% 12.6%
Trip decided before departure First-time tourists Repeat tourists
Mean* 55 days 77 days
Length of stay First-time tourists Repeat tourists
Mean 7 nights 8 nights
≤ 7 nights* 83.1% 69.0%
> 7 nights* 16.9% 31.0%
Booking First-time tourists Repeat tourists
Travel agency* 29.2% 10.3%
Own booking* 70.8% 89.7%
Educational level First-time tourists Repeat tourists
No studies 03.2% 01.0%
Primary studies 14.6% 13.0%
Secondary studies 27.4% 18.1%
University studies 54.8% 67.9%
Statistically significant differences between first-time tourists and repeat tourists at the 5% level are indicated with an asterisk. Source: Author’s own elaboration
34 By contrast, the difference is statistically significant when taking into account how long in advance the trip had been decided on and planned. Repeat tourists replied 77 days on average, and this number decreases to 55 days with first-time tourists. Therefore, a tourist who repeats a visit to a destination decides on the trip an average of three weeks earlier than a tourist who visits a destination for the first time. In our
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case, almost 90% of HSR passengers are repeat tourists, and the choice of destination was made 2.5 months before departure. This is very valuable information for the hospitality industry, especially for accommodations if visitors are staying in hotels, campsites, or rented lodgings. Another characteristic that differentiates repeat tourists from first-time tourists is the length of stay. Although there is only a one-night difference (seven and eight nights on average, respectively), a greater proportion of repeat tourists stay more than seven nights (31%) as opposed to first-time tourists (16.9%). Length of stay is one of the key variables to consider in regard to tourists’ destinations. A decline in tourists’ lengths of stay has been detected in the academic literature (Alegre and Pou, 2006; Salmasi et al., 2012). There is a relationship between the age of tourists and their lengths of stay (Martínez-García and Raya, 2008), and, in our case, repeat tourists are slightly older than first-time tourists. Nevertheless, tourists staying fewer than eight nights predominate in both segments. Similarly, most of the respondents in both segments, 89.8% of repeat tourists and 70.8% of first-time tourists, reported that they did their own booking. The differences are statistically significant.
35 The distribution of tourists according to educational level shows that the predominant response for both segments is university studies, followed by those with secondary studies. More than two-thirds of repeat tourists indicated that they completed their university studies, while this was true for just over half, or 54.8%, of first-time tourists. On average, the presence of HSR passengers with secondary studies is higher in the case of first-time tourists. Nevertheless, the differences are not statistically significant.
36 Table 3 shows HSR passenger distribution taking into account the size of the group, group structure, destination, type of accommodation, and region of residence in Spain. One person travelling alone is the most frequent group in both segments. Nevertheless, the value reaches 52.7% of repeat tourists and is 29.2% of first-time tourists. The distribution declines as the size of the group increases among repeat tourists; two people travelling together is the second (23%), while only 5.5% consist of groups with more than four people. That pattern is not as clear in the case of first-time tourists. The second-most important group is three travellers (24.6%), and groups with more than four people reached 10.8%. The differences between first-time tourists and repeat tourists are all statistically significant except when the size of a group is two travellers.
37 Regarding group structure, the largest is a person travelling alone in the case of repeat tourists, followed by adult relatives and families with children (19.8% and 18.1%, respectively). Only 9.4% are adult friends. By contrast, the largest group structure among first-time tourists is a family with children (36.9%), followed by a person travelling alone (29.2%). The values for adult relatives are very close in both segments. The differences are statistically significant in two of the four typologies of group structure: (i) one person travelling alone and (ii) a family with children. A family trip predominates in the case of tourists who discover Costa Daurada for the first time and one person travelling alone predominates among those having visited the destination several times.
38 The analysis of the destinations of these travellers shows that the highest percentage of first-time tourists corresponds to Salou (38.5%), which is the main and best-known destination in Costa Daurada. Only 10.8% stayed in Tarragona City. It must be highlighted that 30% indicated they were located in the “rest of Tarragona Province.” This category includes coastal locations such as Torredembarra, Altafulla, El Vendrell,
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and Calafell as well as inland locations such as Reus, the second-most populated town in the province, or other small villages. By contrast, although Salou received 23.8% of repeat tourists, the most frequently chosen destination was the “rest of Tarragona Province” (35%). Tarragona City received 15.2%. The values are very close in the case of Cambrils: 16.9% of first-time tourists and 18.9% of repeat tourists. Salou, together with Cambrils and La Pineda (Central Costa Daurada), account for almost 60% of first-time tourists. The value declines to 49.8% in repeat tourists. The results reveal a higher concentration in the case of first-time tourists; they visited the destination for the first time and chose the best-known places, especially Salou. By contrast, tourists who stated that this was not their first visit to the destination are more scattered throughout the territory. However, the differences are statistically significant only in the cases of Salou and La Pineda.
Table 3. Sample distribution according to socio-demographic variables (II).
Size of group First-time tourists Repeat tourists
One* 29.2% 52.7%
Two 21.6% 22.9%
Three* 24.6% 11.0%
Four* 13.8% 07.9%
More than four* 10.8% 05.5%
Group structure First-time tourists Repeat tourists
Alone* 29.2% 52.7%
Family with children* 36.9% 18.1%
Adult relatives 20.0% 19.8%
Adult friends 13.9% 09.4%
Destination First-time tourists Repeat tourists
Salou* 38.5% 23.8%
Cambrils 16.8% 18.9%
La Pineda* 03.1% 07.1%
Tarragona City 10.8% 15.2%
The rest of Tarragona Province 30.8% 35.0%
Type of accommodation First-time tourists Repeat tourists
Hotel* 58.5% 20.9%
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Campsite 04.6% 03.4%
Friends or relatives’ lodgings* 27.7% 42.4%
Own lodging* 01.5% 21.8%
Rented lodging 07.7% 08.7%
Other 00.0% 02.8%
Region of residence First-time tourists Repeat tourists
Madrid* 47.7% 36.1%
Ebro river corridor*4 20.0% 40.9%
Catalonia5 03.1% 10.2%
Andalusia* 20.0% 05.1%
Rest of Spain 09.2% 07.7%
Statistically significant differences between first-time tourists and repeat tourists at the 5% level are indicated with an asterisk. Source: Author’s own elaboration
39 Friends or relatives’ lodgings were the most important type of accommodation for repeat tourists (42.4%), followed by personally owned residences and hotels (21.8% and 20.9%, respectively). The rest of the options represent less than 10% each. By contrast, more than half of first-time tourists were accommodated in hotels, followed by friends or relatives’ lodgings (27.7%). No other option achieves 10%, and only 1.5% of first-time tourists stayed in personally owned residences. The differences in the three aforementioned types of accommodation are statistically significant. The results show, as expected, that it is easier to become a repeat tourist if people personally own a residence at the destination but especially if they can be accommodated by a friend or a relative. It is not usual for tourists to personally own a residence in their first-time visit to the destination, and although 27.7% of them were accommodated by friends or relatives, this value is 15 points lower than in repeat tourists. Thus, 58.5% of first-time tourists chose to stay in a hotel. There are very small differences in regard to campsites or rented lodgings. Although discussions exist about the specific nature of tourism regarded in the “visiting friends and relatives” (VFR) category (Dobruszkes et al., 2015), VFR is well established among tourism scholars as a substantial reason for travel (Jackson, 1990; Backer, 2010) and has strong links to other types of accommodations (Dwyer et al., 2014). Otherwise, VFR as a motivation does not have the same significance as VFR as a type of accommodation, which is the case in our study.
40 A final interesting result is obtained when the origin of the tourists is analysed. On one hand, tourists from the Ebro River Corridor are the largest group in the case of repeat tourists, and Madrid is the second-most important origin. On the other hand, Madrid is the Spain’s region contributing more tourists in their first visit to a destination, almost half of them. Tourists arriving from the Ebro River Corridor account for only 20%, and
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it is half of that in the case of repeat tourists. In this case, the distance between the region of origin and the destination is likely to be a key factor. The numbers of tourists from the Ebro River Corridor as well as from the rest of Catalonia are higher in the case of repeat tourists than first-time tourists (51.1% and 23.1%, respectively). Meanwhile, there is a greater presence of tourists from Madrid and Andalusia among first-time tourists (67.7%) than among repeat tourists (41.2%).
41 In this circumstance the differences between first-time and repeat tourists shown in Table 2 and Table 3 make sense. There is a greater presence of passengers travelling alone in the case of repeat tourists because most of them are lodged in private homes (their own or those of relatives or friends). They arrive at the destination where their friends or relatives are waiting for them (or where they are waiting for their relatives). Conversely, families with children represent the most frequent group structure among first-time tourists, and more than half of them chose a hotel for accommodation in the two best-known towns in the destination area (Salou and Cambrils). This also explains why arranging one’s own booking is more frequent among repeat tourists, as well as the differences in lengths of stay. In addition to age, length of stay is also linked to group size (Alegre and Pou, 2006), cost/type of accommodation (Salmasi, 2012), or tourist origin in terms of distance to the destination (Thrane, 2012).
42 We can state that tourists on their first-time visit to Costa Daurada arriving by means of the Camp de Tarragona HSR station are mainly from Madrid and are lodged in a hotel (32.3%) or in a hotel in Salou (29.2%). By contrast, repeat tourists mainly travelling alone and staying with friends or relatives represent 27.3%, or if they travel alone and choose to stay in the “rest of Tarragona Province”, they represent 23.0%.
High-speed rail services and destination choice
43 Almost 35% of the repeat tourists said that it was not true to say that they came to the destination in Costa Daurada because of the existence of the Camp de Tarragona HSR station, insofar as they answered 0 to Q1 (Table 4). Conversely, only 5.7% of that segment indicated that it was absolutely true (Q1 = 10). Conversely, 44.4% answered 10 to Q2, so it was absolutely true to say that they would have come to the destination in Costa Daurada even if the Camp de Tarragona HSR station did not exist, and only 2.8% responded to the contrary (Q2 = 0). The results vary if the first-time tourist segment is analysed. Only 13.8% answered 0 to Q1, but 9.2% responded 10 to Q2. Meanwhile, 20% said that it was absolutely true to say that they would have come to the destination in Costa Daurada even if the Camp de Tarragona HSR station did not exist in answer to Q2 (10), and 3.1% answered 0.
44 Taking into account the combined answers to question 1 and question 2, only 3.1% of HSR users on holidays in Costa Daurada who said it was their first visit to the destination (new tourists) can be considered “tourists linked to an HSR station” because they answered 10 to Q1 and 0 to Q2. It was absolutely true to say that they came to the destination in Costa Daurada because of the existence of the Camp de Tarragona HSR station and that they would not have come to the destination if there was no HSR station. Nevertheless, the value declines to 1.6% in the case of tourists who said it was not their first visit (repeat tourists). Conversely, 30.8% of this last segment can be considered “loyal destination tourists” (Q1 = 0; Q2 = 10). It was not true to say that they came to the destination in Costa Daurada because of the existence of the
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Camp de Tarragona HSR station and that they would have chosen the destination regardless of the existence of the HSR station. This category is achieved by only 10.8% of the first-time tourists, and the difference is statistically significant.
Table 4. Distribution of extreme answers to the causal questions
Q1 Q2
0* 10 0 10*
First-time tourists 13.8% 9.2% 3.1% 20.0%
Repeat tourists 34.8% 5.7% 2.8% 44.4%
Statistically significant differences at the 5% level are indicated with an asterisk. Source: Author’s own elaboration
45 The increase in the probability of visiting the destination because of the existence of the Camp de Tarragona HSR station in each one of the interviewed tourists is shown in Figure 2 for both first-time tourists (above) and repeat tourists (below). In the first group, the increase in probability is zero for 15 passengers (23.1%). This value includes those answering 0 to Q1 and 10 to Q2, as well as those answering 0 to Q1 and different from 10 to Q2 and those answering 10 to Q2 and different from 0 to Q1. In the second group, the value rises to 49.3% (251 respondents). Conversely, 50 first-time tourists and 258 repeat tourists using HSR services were influenced by the existence of the Camp de Tarragona HSR station. In these two cases, the increase in the probability of the visit varies from 0.01 (1%) to 1 (100%). Nevertheless, a detailed analysis of Figure 2 shows that the increase in probability is lower than 10% in almost half of the 258 repeat tourists and in more than one-third of 50 first-time tourists. By contrast, the increase in the probability is over 80% in only 19 repeat tourists and 4 first-time tourists.
46 The results are summarized in Table 5. The influence of the Camp de Tarragona HSR station (k-value) in destination choice among HSR users amounts the 31.5% in the case of repeat tourists and increases to almost 50% in the case of first-time tourists. As expected, the availability of the Camp de Tarragona HSR station exerts a stronger influence when tourists visit the destination for the first time as opposed to those making a repeat visit. In the first group, the HSR station plays a remarkable role in the choice of destination, mainly in Salou with lodgings in a hotel. It must be highlighted again that two-thirds of the first-time tourists are from distant regions such as Madrid and especially Andalusia.
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Figure 2. Distribution of the individual increase in the probability of visiting Costa Daurada because of the HSR station: first-time tourists (above) and repeat tourists (below).
Source: Author’s own elaboration
47 By contrast, the background probability (1−c) of the second group shows a high probability (78.9%) that they would have chosen the tourist destination regardless of the presence of the HSR station. Although the probability that first-time tourists would have come to the tourist destination regardless of the HSR station is noteworthy (64.3%), it is more than 14 points below the other segment. Almost two-thirds of repeat tourists stayed with friends, relatives, or in their owned residences. We can state that the possibility of staying in these kinds of lodging makes it easier to visit the destination again. The means used to arrive in Costa Daurada is not very important because the Camp de Tarragona HSR station is only one of the available options; nevertheless, it is the option chosen. Tourists from the Ebro River Corridor (which includes Aragon, the nearest region to Catalonia), together with all the other provinces
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of Catalonia (except Tarragona), represent half of the repeat tourists visiting Costa Daurada and less than a quarter of the first-time tourists.
48 Finally, the increase in probability (Δp) of a visit to Costa Daurada and to the rest of Tarragona Province created by the presence of the Camp de Tarragona HSR station is 23.9% in the case of first-time tourists and 12.9% for repeat tourists (calculated from the fractional responses of HSR users). This means that only of every eight repeat tourists and only one of every four first-time tourists travelling by means of HSR services visited the destination because of the availability of this transport infrastructure. Therefore, 23.9% and 12.9% of the tourist expenditure of HSR users in the destination can be attributed to the availability of the Camp de Tarragona HSR station. The magnitude of the influence is much larger in the case of first-time tourists, and the differences are statistically significant. The Camp de Tarragona HSR plays a more important role in the decision to visit the destination in the case of first-time tourists than in the case of repeat tourists. Nevertheless, it must once again be noted that first-time tourists account for only 11.3% of the total.
Table 5. Causal effect of the Camp de Tarragona HSR station.
First-time tourists Repeat tourists
k* 0.475 0.315
1-c* 0.643 0.789
Δp* 0.239 0.129
Statistically significant differences between first-time tourists and repeat tourists at the 5% level are indicated with an asterisk. Source: Author’s own elaboration
Conclusions
49 This paper analyses the effect of the existence of an HSR station on the destination decisions of tourists using HSR services, taking into account whether the tourists are visiting the destination for the first time or are repeat visitors. We designate them as first-time tourists and repeat tourists. The probabilistic methodology applied (Young et al., 2005) is a useful way to assess the influence using the individual fractional contribution of each of the HSR passengers rather than using them in a binary classification.
50 The results obtained show that HSR users visiting the Costa Daurada as tourists cannot be considered homogeneous in regard to the influence on their destination choice exercised by the Camp de Tarragona HSR station. Significant differences between both analysed segments are found by means of the two scale questions. The decision to travel to Costa Daurada among HSR users is influenced more by the availability of the Camp de Tarragona HSR station in the case of first-time tourists than in repeat tourists (47.5% and 31.5%, respectively). Conversely, repeat tourists show a higher background probability that they would have come to the chosen destination even if the HSR
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station were not available in comparison to first-time tourists (78.9% and 64.3%, respectively). The increase in probability created by the Camp de Tarragona HSR station is almost twice as high in first-time tourists as in repeat tourists using trains. We can affirm that 23.9% of first-time tourists and 12.9% of repeat tourists arriving at Costa Daurada by means of the Camp de Tarragona HSR station chose this destination because of the availability of this station. Almost one-quarter of expenditures in the destination by first-time tourists and 12.9% by repeat tourists can be attributed to the availability of the Camp de Tarragona HSR station.
51 This study opens the door to further research on this subject and could provide key information for the promotion strategies for HSR services among their most likely users and to promote the destination in the areas linked to the Costa Daurada destination. At the same time, similar surveys could be replicated in regard to other HSR stations located near coastal or urban destinations in order to explore patterns and develop interpretation models according to the nature, scope, evolution, and characteristics of the HSR services in each specific location.
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NOTES
1. ALVIA trains allow long-distance trips using HSR and conventional railway tracks. These trains have the ability to use both Iberian and international gauge. 2. The numbers of AVE trains noted in brackets include non-direct services. That is, the connection services available between Barcelona-Madrid and Madrid-Sevilla trains. 3. Here the values of ki, 1-ci and ci vary from 0 to 1. 4. This category includes Aragon, La Rioja, the Basque Country, and Navarra. 5. Except Tarragona Province
ABSTRACTS
This paper explores the effects of high-speed rail (HSR) services on the destination choice of first-time tourists and repeat tourists arriving in the Costa Daurada, a mature coastal destination in Catalonia, using HSR services. The analysis is based on a probabilistic method and uses data from a survey of HSR passengers at the Camp de Tarragona HSR station during the summer of 2014. It concludes that the increase in probability of visiting this particular destination because of the existence of the HSR station among this specific group of visitors is quite larger in the case of first-time tourists (23.9%) than in repeat tourists (12.9%). At the same time, significant differences are found in the profiles of both segments of HSR passengers.
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Cet article propose d’explorer les effets du train à grande vitesse (TGV) dans le choix de la Costa Daurada, en Catalogne, comme destination touristique. Nous distinguons les voyageurs qui ont visité pour la première fois la destination de ceux qui ont visité la destination autrefois. On a appliqué une méthode probabiliste de causalité pour calculer l’augmentation de la probabilité de fréquentation de cette destination touristique grâce à l’existence de la gare du TGV. Les résultats nous montrent que la probabilité est plus élevée pour les usagers du TGV qui ont visité pour la première fois la destination (23,9%-12,9%). On a relevé aussi des différences importantes dans les caractéristiques sociodémographiques des voyageurs ainsi que dans les caractéristiques du voyage et du séjour.
INDEX
Keywords: high-speed rail, first-time and repeat tourists, destination choice, Costa Daurada, Catalonia, tourism geography Mots-clés: train à grande vitesse, première fois à la destination, choix de la destination touristique, Costa Daurada, Catalogne, géographie du tourisme
AUTHORS
ÒSCAR SALADIÉ Serra Húnter Fellow, Department of Geography, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Joanot Martorell, 15, 43480 Vila-seca (Tarragona), [email protected]
SALVADOR ANTON CLAVÉ Department of Geography, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Joanot Martorell, 15, 43480 Vila-seca (Tarragona), [email protected]
AARON GUTIÉRREZ Corresponding author, Department of Geography, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Joanot Martorell, 15, 43480 Vila-seca (Tarragona), [email protected]
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Does high-speed rail affect destination choice for tourism purpose? Disneyland Paris and Futuroscope case studies La desserte ferroviaire à grande vitesse influence-t-elle le choix de destinations touristiques? Le cas de Disneyland Paris et du Futuroscope
Marie Delaplace, Francesca Pagliara and Andrea La Pietra
The authors would like to thank students of the University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (IFU) and those of Poitiers University who conducted the surveys and especially, Adeline Beaumont who carried out the survey, built the data base and done the first analysis concerning the Futuroscope. They also would like to thank the University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée and the Labex Urban Futures for their financial support and Frederic Dobruszkes for his helpful comments on the previous versions of this paper.
Introduction
1 Transport is considered a need for tourism since, by definition, the tourist is a traveller1. “Transport forms an integral part of the tourism system, connecting the tourist-generating and destination region together […]. Transport is the most critical element in the promotion of the growth of domestic and international tourism" (Page, 2007, p. 13, 111). But its role has often been overlooked, considering that “little serious research has been undertaken into the significance of transport as a factor in destination development” (Prideaux, 2000, p. 54). The lack of empirical studies generates many expectations in the cities served by high-speed rail (HSR) in several countries in terms of tourism development (Delaplace et al., 2014a; 2014b): the expected increase in the accessibility of a destination would lead to an increase in transport demand and therefore to an increase in tourism itself. However in the literature there is a lack of contributions of ex post studies (Bazin-Benoit and Delaplace, 2013) as well as on the way HSR affects destination choice. Moreover we can expect that the link
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between HSR and the tourism market depends on the type of tourism (Bazin et al., 2011).
2 The aim of this paper is to identify the extent and the nature of the relationship between HSR and destination choice in the case of theme parks at two levels, namely the parks themselves but also other places. Theme parks are tourist specific places that can be considered “stay tourism”, (in contrast with “circuit tourism”) that is, a kind of tourism with a unique motivation (Gay, 2004) and in a given area. In this case it is expected that the link between a given HSR station and a theme park is stronger when the HSR station is closer to tourist facilities and even stronger when it is conceived for the tourist structure itself (Delaplace and Perrin, 2015). However the question is also to investigate if tourists coming to these theme parks by HSR are also visiting other nearby places or places connected by HSR. The objective is to test whether there is a “diffusion” process bringing benefits to other tourist places closer to the parks. Two theme parks, Disneyland® Paris and Futuroscope Park that are both served by an HSR station, Marne-la-Vallée-Chessy and Futuroscope TGV respectively, have been considered as case studies in this contribution (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Disneyland Paris and Futuroscope and their HSR stations.
Source: Modified from Delaplace and Perrin (2015)
3 The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents a review of the literature concerning HSR services and tourism and specifically destination choice and the characteristics of theme parks. Section 3 focuses on the two theme parks, their products and their location and section 4 highlights the differences concerning the links between HSR and theme parks. Conclusions are reported in section 5.
HSR, tourism and theme parks: what is the link?
4 There is a growing literature concerning the link between HSR and the tourism market in many countries (Albalate and Fageda, 2016; Delaplace et al., 2014a,b; Coronado et al.,
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2013; Mimeur et al., 2013; Delaplace and Perrin, 2013; Bazin et al., 2013, 2014; Mannone, 1995; Masson and Petiot, 2009; Wang et al., 2012; Chen et al., 2012; Chen, 2013; Pagliara et al., 2015a.b; see Bazin-Benoit and Delaplace, 2013, for a review). Expectations concerning economic impacts following the opening of an HSR line are usually high. However ex post analyses show that the link between HSR service and tourism depends on the type of tourism (Bazin et al., 2011). Indeed the different types of tourism differ in their length of stay, purposes and transport modes chosen by tourists. The literature shows that urban and business tourism can benefit from HSR services because they are short tourist stay demanding for rapid transport. However even in this case, the effects of HSR services on tourism are controversial.
5 The studies conducted after the inauguration of HSR services show that, only in some cases, its presence fosters urban and business tourism. This trend depends on the accessibility change, on promotion policies and on collaborative strategies (Bazin- Benoit and Delaplace, 2013). Moreover in many cases, this can be observed only in the short term and the HSR opening can also induce a decrease in the length stay. Finally its promotion is more difficult in small and medium-sized cities (Bazin et al., 2013a). However, it is demonstrated that it can be used as a tool for enhancing the tourist heritage value (Bazin et al., 2014).
6 Few studies have investigated the role of HSR service in tourists’ destination choice. A survey was carried out in 2012 in Paris in few attraction sites and at the Lyon HSR station, to identify whether the HSR services could influence the choice of the destination for tourists and the probability of coming back. Delaplace et al. (2014) demonstrate that rail service affects 49% of the respondents, after the heritage and architectural sites. On the other hand, the analysis carried out by Valeri et al. (2012) in Rome reports different results: HSR services do not affect the choice of revisiting Rome, but influence the probability of visiting other closer cities served by HSR. The analyses carried out in Madrid (Pagliara et al., 2015b) and in Naples (Pagliara, 2014) show the same results. Other recent studies analyse the impact of HSR on coastal destinations in Costa Daurada and show that some tourists would not have reached the destination without the presence of an HSR service (Saladié et al., 2016).
7 The premise of this manuscript is that the study of the relationship between HSR and destination choice of theme parks has not been treated in the current literature. Therefore this contribution aims at providing useful insights for public stakeholders and rail operators in their decision to invest in HSR stations.
8 Theme parks are very interesting cases, because they induce specific forms of tourism for which transportation is relevant. Theme parks are a kind of amusement parks based on a specific theme that allow having fun and relax. Some parks can also be useful for education purpose. Theme parks development occurs all over the world, in both developed and less developed countries. In his book on the global theme park industry, Anton Clavé (2007) identifies 12 characteristics of theme parks. Two of them are of interest for our purpose. Firstly “they are organized as closed spaces or with controlled access”, secondly “they contain enough rides, shows and systems of movement to create a visit that lasts on average some 5 to 7 h” (Anton Clavé, 2007, p. 28). Even if parks’ managers try to make tourists stay for a longer time, theme parks are conceived for short tourist stay and consequently need a rapid transportation mode to reach them. They can be defined as “stay tourism” (see above). From this point of view, the study of the interactions between the theme park and the HSR service seems to be relevant. The impact of
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transportation on this kind of park expansion is reported in Anton Clavé’s (2007) work, mainly focusing on the question of increased accessibility. Medium- and long-distance transport modes influence the number of visitors, being potential customers of the park. Local transport modes can influence the number of visitors in the neighbourhood. Low accessibility to these places is considered a negative factor (Pikkemaat and Schuckert, 2007). However other characteristics can also affect the choice of HSR. Theme parks are tourist destinations for families, who can estimate less expensive to travel by car.
9 Moreover, as a “stay tourism”, theme parks are assumed to make tourists stay in a kind of oasis (Lukas, 2008) and consequently to limit the diffusion process of tourists around the park. Empirical evidence on these aspects is needed and this paper tries to fill this gap present in the literature.
Disneyland Paris and Futuroscope: the case studies
10 Disneyland Paris and Futuroscope near Poitiers, considered the most important parks2 in France, have been chosen as case studies. Futuroscope was opened in 1987, while Disneyland was opened five years later in 1992. In 2013 and since their opening, Disneyland Paris Parks have hosted 250 million of visitors, while Futuroscope has been visited by about 46 million since 1987.
Disneyland and Futuroscope: Two theme parks with an HSR station…
11 According to SNELAC3, Dinseyland and Futuroscope are attraction parks, offering recreation activities but also education through entertainment.
12 Disneyland Paris is a theme park, which is based on the Disney’s world. Unlike Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California, it was totally designed before becoming a park. It is actually made up of two parks (with the Walt Disney Studios Park), hotels, and entertainment and a retail centre, all of them based on the Disney’s world, with Disney attractions, Disney stores, etc.
13 Futuroscope is also a theme park but it is quite different since it represents a multimedia attraction and a new technology-based theme park. It is linked to a technological park “Futuroscope Technopole” which focuses on digital technologies. It is more oriented to education and this characteristic is assumed to induce a generated demand. It is less known but some attractions are well-known, including Arthur, the 4D Adventure or more recently the Raving Rabbids’ (“Lapins crétins”) Time Machine.
14 Disneyland Paris and Futuroscope are both served by an HSR station (Figure 1). In both case studies, the park entry is located just near the HSR station, whose main function is to serve the park themselves. Both stations considered «stations for tourist equipment» (AUAP, 2008; Troin, 2008; Facchinetti-Mannone and Richier, 2011) were requested by the parks’ managers and sometimes by local actors.
15 Marne-la-Vallée Chessy station was built in 1994, i.e. two years after the opening of the first Park Disneyland. For Disneyland Paris managers, this station was very important with the aim of attracting more foreigner tourists arriving by train. For this reason, Disneyland Paris has funded one third of 126.5 million of Euros needed to build the
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station. For Disney’s managers, HSR represents an important transport mode for reaching the park. In 2000, they considered that the HSR station was a key element since the previous year 59% of their clients were foreigners4.
16 Futuroscope TGV station was built with the financial support of the Vienne department5 for 9.3 million of Euros in 2000, i.e. 13 years after the opening of the park. The station belongs to this department, which pays for the operational and maintenance costs. For the Vienne department, the station seems to be important for both the theme park and the technological park, located near the former park in 1987.
… But very different neighbourhoods and different transport infrastructures
17 Futuroscope is located near Poitiers which is a medium-sized city with 254,051 inhabitants in the urban area6 in 2011. Poitiers is the capital of Poitou-Charentes region, which has 777,773 inhabitants, in an area of 25,810 km2. At the same date Paris urban area had 12.3 million of inhabitants.
18 It is interesting to remember that Paris is the first tourist destination in France. For instance, in 2013, there were 67.4 million stays in hotel in the Ile-de-France region, while only 4.6 million in the Poitou-Charentes region (INSEE data)7. Paris is also one of the first tourist destination in the world8. Consequently the market area of the two parks is very different.
19 Concerning the service, Disneyland is served by a station located on the high-speed line (HSL), whereas Futuroscope is served by a station on the traditional rail network (Figure 2). In France, high-speed trains (HSTs) are also operational on classical tracks: in 2012, HSTs were serving only 20 HSR stations located on HSL against 197 stations located on classical tracks.
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Figure 2. The French high-speed rail network.
Source: adapted from Wikipedia Commons
20 Marne-La-Vallée-Chessy station is a so-called as “interconnection station”, i.e. HSR services calling at this station are not radial services from/to central Paris. They usually link French HSR stations located in other regions (Lille, Nantes, Reims Champagne-Ardenne station, Meuse station, Lorraine station, Strasbourg, Lyon, Aix-en- Provence, Montpellier, Nîmes, Avignon, Marseille) sometimes via other peripheral stations located on the Parisian HSR by-pass (Roissy Charles de Gaulle Airport and Massy stations).
21 Marne-la-Vallée-Chessy is also the terminal station of the so-called Ouigo low-cost HSR operated by SNCF since April 2013 (Delaplace and Dobruzskes, 2015)9 and some international ones to/from London.
22 This station is also served by the RER A, a regional express train which runs from Marne-la-Vallée-Chessy to central Paris, La Défense and beyond.
23 Futuroscope station is connected to Paris Montparnasse station, to the peripheral stations on the Parisian by-pass (Massy, Marne-la-Vallée-Chessy, Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport) and to some French cities and HSR stations (Lille, Strasbourg, Reims, Champagne-Ardenne station, Meuse and Lorraine TGV). With the forthcoming South Europe Atlantic HSL, the French government and RFF10 were committed in 2009 to maintain a high quality service for currently served cities. Following an agreement that ensures the service to be preserved in the future, the Futuroscope (but also the Chatellerault city) would still be served11. Unlike Disneyland Paris and until December 2014, it was only accessible by car and by bus from Poitiers12.
24 The services analysis (Table 1) shows that Marne-La-Vallée-Chessy station is characterized by an excellent and more direct service than Futuroscope with 87 trains
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per day, against five HSTs for the Futuroscope. Moreover transport infrastructures in Marne-La-Vallée-Chessy are also more important than in Futuroscope.
Table 1. Transport infrastructures in Disneyland Paris and Futuroscope.
Marne-la-Vallée Chessy Station Futuroscope TGV Station
Opening 1994 2000
Paris Gare de Lyon (since1981) Previous HSR Paris Gare Montparnasse (since 1989) Poitiers city station (1990) service Paris Gare du Nord (since 1993)
Position of the On radial, conventional line (100 On a new high-speed line bypassing station in relation km from the high-speed line from central Paris to the line Paris to the south of Tours)
Inter-regional services (including Services on the axis Paris- Type of HSR international services) and Ouigo (high- Bordeaux + inter-regional (France services speed, low-fare train) North and East)
8713 (Bruxelles, Londres et Roissy 5 (Massy, Marne la Vallée Chessy, Charles de Gaulle Airport, Lille, Roissy Charles de Gaulle, Reims, Number of HSR Nantes**, Reims, Meuse, Lorraine, Champagne-Ardenne station, services per day and Strasbourg**, Lyon*, Aix en Provence*, Meuse and Lorraine TGV, Destinations Montpellier***, Nîmes***, Avignon*, Bordeaux**, Lille, Strasbourg**, Marseille*) Paris)14
Until the end of 2014 TER (regional RER A train) only in Poitiers Bus station Bus Others transport infrastructures CDG Airport (231 destinations in the Poitiers-Biard Airport (5 direct world)15 destinations, whose 4 to 16 Highways A1 and A4 international destination) Highway A10
Park proximity Immediate vicinity Walkable gateway
* Ouigo included. ** HSR but no HSL though. Source: Authors’ elaborations
Disneyland Paris and Futuroscope: looking for HSR driven effects
Data and methods
25 In order to collect information concerning the destination choice to the two parks and the willingness to visit other places in their surroundings, two revealed-preference (RP)
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surveys were carried out during the two weeks in 2013 All Saints’ holidays. The chosen places were Marne-la-Vallée-Chessy near the HSR station, at the bus station and close to the hotels and at Futuroscope, inside the park, near the park entrance and on the road between the park and the hotels, which is close to the HSR station (Figure 1).
26 People reaching the two parks were all tourists (travelling for leisure or business tourism), i.e. they did not come from the regions where the parks are located (namely, Ile-de-France regarding Disneyland and Poitou-Charentes regarding Futuroscope). The sample was chosen randomly. 564 valid questionnaires were collected in Disneyland Paris and 433 in Futuroscope.
27 A logistic regression approach has been used to analyse the data. The literature on logistic regression is large and rapidly growing since 1970. Proposed to overcome the limitations of ordinary least square regression in handling dichotomous outcomes (Peng and So, 2002), this methodology has been consolidated overtime and has become an integral component of any discrete data analysis (Agresti, 2002; Allison, 1999; Kleymann and Seristö, 2004; Schlesselman, 1982). Models using logistic regression have been extensively applied to tourism demand analysis (Witt and Witt, 1995) especially when studying the decision to go/not-to-go on holidays.
28 In the simplest case where there is one predictor variable X only and one dichotomous outcome variable Y (binary case), the logistic model predicts the logit of Y from X (Peng and So, 2002). With reference to qualitative response variables, as in our case, logistic regression generates the probability to observe a specific aspect (k) of Y given X (P(Y)=k/X or πk(X)), following a binomial distribution of the error term.
29 Two models, using this approach, were specified and calibrated respectively for Disneyland and Futuroscope.
30 The logistic regression specification is in the following reported:
Socio-economic characteristics of the tourists
31 Different socioeconomic characteristics and the role of HSR in the destination choice have been analysed in both case studies.
32 The customers of the two parks are very different. Disneyland is characterized by foreign tourists (37%), while only 4% for the Futuroscope. In the case of Futuroscope more than 22% of the tourists came from Paris (Table 2).
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Table 2. Origins of Disneyland and Futuroscope clients.
Disneyland Paris % Futuroscope %
- - Paris area 22.2%
Neighbouring region 18.9% France outside Paris 63% Other French regions 55.2%
Other countries 37% Other countries 3.7%
Source: authors’ elaborations based on the surveys in 2013
33 Table 3 shows that Disneyland and Futuroscope customers are mostly represented by women 71% and 60% respectively. For couples it is the same in both cases (87% in Futuroscope, 84% at Disneyland). 77% of the tourists visiting Futuroscope hold a university degree (higher education), while 66% in the case of Disneyland.
Table 3. Socio-economic characteristics of the two samples.
Disneyland Paris Futuroscope
Gender 539 433
Man 158 29% 175 40%
Woman 381 71% 258 60%
Marital Status 539 433
Couple 85 84% 376 87%
Single 454 16% 57 13%
Age 505 429
18-25 39 8% 42 10%
26-45 387 76.6% 201 46.9%
46-65 73 14% 150 35%
>65 6 1% 36 8%
Level Of Education 564 415
Higher Education 378 67% 321 77%
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No higher education 186 33% 94 23%
Source: authors’ elaborations based on the surveys in 2013
34 The customers visiting Futuroscope present a higher occupational status. Similarly, they have much higher income 48.7% against 37.4% (Table 4) and they are also older in the Futuroscope case study. The percentage of clients with a low income (between 500 and 1,500 Euros) is 2.5 times higher in Disneyland (11.6%) than in Futuroscope (4.2%). Similarly, the unemployed are twice times higher in the case of Disney.
Table 4. Socio-economic characteristics of the samples17.
Disneyland Paris Futuroscope
Tot % Tot %
Monthly Income 413 380
<500 8 2% 8 2%
500-1500 48 11.6% 16 4.2%
1500-2500 83 20% 67 18%
2500-3500 121 29,3% 102 26.8%
3500-4500 77 19% 93 24%
>4500 76 18.4% 94 24.7%
Professional Status 446 419
Farmer 38 9% 6 1%
Freelance 18 81 18.2% 32 7.6%
Manager and High Occ 0% 133 32%
Intermediate Occ 67 15.0% 49 11,7%
white collars 184 41% 128 31%
Blue collars 8 1.8% 15 3.6%
Retired 11 2% 31 7%
Unemployed 57 12.8% 25 6.0%
Source: authors’ elaborations based on the surveys in 2013
35 The analysis concerning the transportation modes chosen to reach both parks shows that the link between the park attendance and HSR seems to be more important in
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Disney than in the Futuroscope case study. While 46% comes by HSR to Disneyland, they are only 14% in Futuroscope (Table 5).
Table 5. Transport mode chosen.
Disneyland Paris Futuroscope
French Foreign French Foreign Transport All Tourists Tourists All Tourists Tourists mode (63%) (37%) (96%) (4%)
HSR 260 46% 55% 30% 59 14% 13% 19%
Car 178 32% 32% 30% 350 81% 82% 63%
Plane 79 14% 4% 32% 4 1% 1% 6%
Bus 17 3% 2% 5% 20 5% 4% 13%
Train 4 1% 1% 0% 0 0% 0% 0%
Other 27 5% 6% 3% - -
Total 565 100% 100% 100% 433 100% 100% 100%
Source: authors’ elaborations based on the surveys in 2013
36 Two interdependent factors could explain this gap: the location of the Futuroscope Park in a more rural area and the lower level of service in terms of both destinations range and frequencies due to the fact that Futuroscope is not served by many high- speed lines.
37 In Futuroscope, 81% tourists came by car (against 32% in Disneyland). Moreover, while 55% of French tourists are using TGV in the case of Disneyland, they are only 13% in the Futuroscope case. The percentage is also different concerning foreigners. 30% of the foreigners used it in the case of Disneyland (against 19% in the Futuroscope case). Unexpectedly for Disneyland Park managers, it seems that HSR is more used by French tourists than foreigners.
Do HSR services affect the choice of visiting Disneyland and Futuroscope?
38 Two models, using the logistic regression approach, were specified and calibrated respectively for Disneyland and Futuroscope. It is important at this stage to state that these models were introduced with the objective of computing the probability (Y) of choosing a destination (a theme park) and the impact of HSR on this choice. While the choice of a destination is also influenced by the transport mode to reach it, here the focus is on analysing whether HSR has an impact on this choice. Different is the case of a mode choice model which should have been specified considering different transport mode alternatives, with different attributes.
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39 The modelling process allows highlighting the variables that are considered significant in the destination choice19 and among them the impact of HSR on reaching each Park is underlined. These variables are the independent ones (Table 6).
Table 6. Variables specification.
Equal to 1 if the tourist would not come without the HSR service; 0 NO_HSR_NO_COME otherwise.
Equal to 1 if the departure station accessibility has influenced the tourist DEP_ STATION_ACCESS in the choice of the transport mode.
Equal to 1 if the cost has influenced the tourists in the choice of the TRANSP_COST transport mode.
Equal to 1 if the travel time has influenced the tourist in the choice of the TRAVEL TIME transport mode.
FREELANCE Equal to 1 if the tourist is a freelance; 0 otherwise.
ORGANIZED_GROUP20 Equal to 1 if the tourist is travelling with a organized group; 0 otherwise.
Equal to 1 if the tourist has come to the park thanks to the easy access; 0 ACCESSIBILITY otherwise.
Equal to 1 if the tourist has come to the park thanks to the promotional TRANSP_PROMO offers concerning the transportation service; 0 otherwise.
TRAVEL_ FAM_NB Number of family members accompanying the tourist
Equal to 1 if the tourist has organised his/her journey with a package ORGANIZED_TRAVEL including the mode of transport; 0 otherwise.
Equal to 1 if the accessibility of the service has influenced the tourist in ACESS_HSR SERVICE the choice of transport mode; 0 otherwise.
FLEXIBILITY_HSR Equal to 1 if the flexibility of the service has influenced the tourist in the SERVICE choice of transport mode; 0 otherwise.
40 Models estimation results are reported in Tables 7 and 8 for the case of Disneyland and Futuroscope respectively. The T-value test has been done with a risk of error of 5%, i.e. P-value equal to 0.05. When the t-value is greater than 1.96 it means that the variable is significant and therefore it has an impact.
Table 7. Estimation results for the Disneyland Park at 5%.
Dependent variable: probability of visiting Disneyland
Variable Coefficient T-value VIF
NO_HSR_NO_COME 0.272 8.541 1.294
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DEP_ STATION_ACCESS 0.495 15.346 1.328
TRANSP_COST 0.114 3.925 1.066
SPEED_OF_JOURNEY 0.084 2.760 1.193
FREELANCE 0.061 2.172 1.019
ORGANIZED_GROUP -0.063 -2.174 1.055
ACCESSIBILITY 0.084 2.824 1.136
TRANSP_PROMO 0.072 2.511 1.060
Source: authors’ elaborations based on the surveys in 2013
Table 8. Estimation results for Futuroscope at 5%.
Dependent variable: probability of visiting Futuroscope
Variable Coefficient T-Value VIF
NO_HSR_NO_COME -0.550 -15.684 1.145
TRAVEL_ FAM_NB -0.015 -3.017 1.271
ORGANIZED_TRAVEL 0.793 6.681 1.106
TRANSP_PROMO 0.154 3.382 1.264
FLEXIBILITY_HSR SERVICE -0.070 -4.398 1.088
ACCESS_HSR SERVICE 0.686 21.638 1.307
Source: authors’ elaborations based on the surveys in 2013
41 This stage of model estimation adds significant and additional contributions to the survey analysis since it provides statistical inferences. Moreover the weight of each variable on tourists’ choices is caught. The models show that tourists who come to Disneyland by HSR would not have come without it while tourists coming to Futuroscope by HSR would still have come without this service21. The models also show that the customers of Disneyland and Futuroscope came by HSR due to promotional offers concerning the transport mode22. However, those of Disneyland also came thanks to the travel time and travel cost considerations. One quarter of tourists came with Ouigo, the SNCF’s low-cost HSR service (see Delaplace and Dobruszkes, 2015). Moreover the accessibility to the departure station is significant only for the Disneyland tourists.
42 Tourists that are more likely to use HSR to go to Disney for tourism purpose are freelance and are not travelling with an organized group. In the Futuroscope case study, tourists that are more likely to use HSR travel with an organized travel or with few members of their family. When choosing HSR the limited family size is important only for Futuroscope (respectively 1.4 teenagers and 1.2 children).
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43 It is also interesting to note that tourists who visited Futuroscope did not come by HSR due to a lack of flexibility even if the presence of this service influenced their coming.
44 These results confirm Table 5 in the way that HSR is important for Disneyland and not for Futuroscope and different are the reasons. First, Futuroscope station is not directly served by a HSL and the service is very low at Futuroscope station compared to the one of Marne-la-Vallée station (Table 1). Second, as reported above, in Marne-la-Vallée station, one quarter of tourists came with Ouigo while Futuroscope is currently not served by this low-cost HSR. Third, concerning Futuroscope, 74.1% of the visitors came from the neighbouring regions (18.9%) or from other French regions (55.2%). In both cases, HSR cannot be used to reach Futuroscope, or in most cases, not convenient due to a connection in Paris. All these considerations support the little impact on destination choice concerning the Futuroscope Park. It is likely that the socioeconomic characteristics concerning the types of tourists and the geographical characteristics are the most relevant elements explaining this trend.
Does accessing theme parks by HSR induce visiting other places?
45 Another key aspect is the behaviour of the tourists in Disney and Futuroscope concerning their visiting other places in the aftermath. If HSR can play a role in fostering tourism in a park, the question is also to know if it supports the diffusion process of tourists around the parks and if so under what conditions. For local policy makers, it is interesting to investigate this aspect due to their expectations concerning the impact of HSR on tourism expansion in their territories. The hypothesis is that HSR could limit the diffusion process of tourists if no other public transportation alternative exists at the HSR station and if tourism sites are widespread.
46 The data shows that there are important differences between the two case studies (Table 9).
47 First, the analysis shows that tourists visiting Disney, who visited other destinations outside the metropolitan area of Paris, are very few and in the “Seine et Marne” department (respectively only 2% and 1%).Tourists visiting Futuroscope, who visited other destinations outside the Poitou-Charentes region, are more numerous (17%) and more oriented towards the choice of the car (93% from them).23
Table 9. HSR and visiting other places.
Disneyland Paris Futuroscope
All the Sample Tot % Tot %
Visiting other places in the department 8 1% 58 13%
Visiting other places in the region 138 24% 65 15%
Visiting other places outside the region 9 2% 73 17%
Source: authors’ elaborations based on the surveys in 2013
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48 Concerning the closeness, there is also a significant difference. A more relevant percentage of tourists visited places close to Disney (24%) because a great part of them visit Paris (20%), whereas few tourists visited places close to Futuroscope (13%) and 88% of them chose car.
49 We have also estimated what are the variables influencing tourists visiting other places close to Disneyland and to Futuroscope. Also for this model, a regression approach has been followed.
50 In Table 10 the variables description is reported for the Disneyland model.
Table 10. Variables specification for Disneyland.
MODE_DISNEY_METRO Equal to 1 if the tourist used the subway to go to Disney; 0 otherwise.
NIGHT_PARIS Number of night spent by tourists during the stay in Paris.
If the tourist has organized his travel buying a package which includes the ORGA_FORM_ACC accommodation; 0 otherwise.
Equal to 1 if the tourist visited or is visiting other destination outside the OTHER_DEST metropolitan area of Paris
PS2 Equal to 1 if the tourist is a freelance; 0 otherwise.
TRAV_ALONE Equal to 1 if the tourist is travelling alone; 0 otherwise.
HIGHER EDUCATION Equal to 1 if the tourist holds a university degree; 0 otherwise.
Equal to 1 if the tourist has come to Disney for the possibility to visit more VISIT_CRITER_MULTI than one place; 0 otherwise.
51 Estimation results are described in Table 11.
Table 11. Estimation results for Disneyland.
Dependent variable: probability of visiting other places than Disneyland
Variable Coefficient T-Value Vif
MODE_DISNEY_METRO 0.249 7.567 1.055
NIGHT_PARIS 0.212 6.295 1.109
ORGA_FORM_ACC -0.072 -2.218 1.033
OTHER_DEST 0.176 5.457 1.013
PS2 -0.065 -1.993 1.051
TRAV_ALONE -0.071 -2.169 1.034
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HIGHER EDUCATION 0.089 2.686 1.068
VISIT_CRITER_MULTI 0.402 11.893 1.115
WILL_RETURN_DISNEY -0.068 -2.113 1.023
Source: authors’ elaborations based on the surveys in 2013
52 As for the previous model, the estimation analysis reported for Disneyland (and the next one for Futuroscope) provide statistical inferences and allow catching the weight of each variable on tourists’ choices. The tourists who are more likely to visit other places close to Disneyland for tourism purpose have the following characteristics: they were not freelance and hold a higher education degree. They did not travel alone and have not organized their travel buying a package (including the accommodation) and they would not return to Disney. They used subway to go to Disney, they came to Disney for the opportunity to visit more than one place, i.e. other destinations and they spent some night in Paris24.
53 In Table 12 the variables description is reported for Futuroscope.
Table 12. Variables specification for Futuroscope.
Equal to 1 if the tourist has come to Poitou-Charentes for tourism VISIT_CRITER_PC_TOURISM purpose in general; 0 otherwise.
Equal to 1 if the tourist place of residence is located more than 5 DISTANCE_3 hours by car; 0 otherwise.
VISIT_POITIERS Equal to 1 if the tourist visited or is visiting Poitiers; 0 otherwise.
VISIT_ROCHELLE Equal to 1 if the tourist visited or is visiting Rochelle; 0 otherwise.
Number of night spent by tourists during the stay in Poitou- TOT_TRAV_NIGHT_PC Charentes
Equal to 1 if the tourist used other mean of transport to visit places OTHER_MODE_PC_BUS close to Poitou-Charentes; 0 otherwise.
Equals to 1 If the possibility to reach other site close to Futuroscope TRANSPCRIT_MULTI_DEST has influenced the tourist in the choice of transport mode; 0 otherwise.
54 In Table 13 the estimation results are described.
Table 13. Estimation results for Futuroscope.
Dependent variable: probability of visiting other places than Futuroscope
VARIABLE COEFFICIENT T-VALUE VIF
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VISIT_ROCHELLE 0.700 12.983 1.189
VISIT_POITIERS 0.748 19.383 1.193
TOT_TRAV_NIGHT_PC 0.056 5.111 1.365
TRANSPCRIT_MULTI_DEST 0.083 2.259 1.193
VISIT_CRITER_PC_TOURISM 0.263 5.005 1.266
OTHER_MODE_PC_BUS 0.421 2.628 1.168
DISTANCE_3 -0.067 -2.634 1.096
Source: authors’ elaborations based on the surveys in 2013
55 The tourists who are more likely to visit other places close to Futuroscope for tourism purpose have the following characteristics: they came in Poitou-Charentes for tourism purpose and not only because of the interest in the park. They came by bus, allowing visiting other places, and their residence place was located less than 5 hours travelled by car. They visited La Rochelle and Poitiers and the number of nights spent during the stay in Poitou-Charentes is linked with the probability to visit other places close to Futuroscope25.
56 The diffusion process is very different in both cases but from the statistical point of view the HSR has not an impact on this process. In Disneyland, the probability of visiting other places is linked to the proximity of Paris- which is one of the world most visited cities- and the possibility to use suburban train. Concerning Futuroscope, the diffusion process depends more on car for two reasons. First, for a long time Futuroscope station was not served by other trains. Second, attractions near Futuroscope are low, remote and more dispersed in a rural area.
Conclusions and further perspectives
57 The objective of this paper has been that of identifying the role of HSR in theme park destination choice. If there is a growing literature on the link between HSR and the tourism market, the results are controversial. Previous studies show that this link is quite heterogeneous. The surveys proposed confirm this point. Only few tourists have visited Futuroscope by HSR and they would have come without HSR. Moreover the tourists visiting other places near Futuroscope have not chosen HSR. The link between Futuroscope and more generally tourism in the region and HSR is not very significant.
58 Nevetheless Futuroscope TGV station could also be useful for the Futuroscope technopole. Moreover in December 2014 a TER link, i.e. a regional train was inaugurated in the station. It is likely that in the future, the diffusion process will be more significant. However the question is to know what will be the service at Futuroscope station after the future HSL South Europe Atlantic (SEA) opening. Indeed, despite the agreement (see above) the service quality is still discussed today26.
59 Concerning Disney, the link is more significant. Tourists coming by HSR are numerous and would not have come without HSR. Nevertheless the diffusion process is not linked
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to HSR. The probability of visiting other places is linked to RER and also to the proximity of Paris which allows visiting different places.
60 The surveys highlight that the accessibility to HSR has not always had an impact on the theme park destination choice. It definitely contributes to a better understanding concerning the heterogeneity of the wider effects of HSR on tourism according to places. Once again, having HSR is not enough, the quality of the services is also very important. Moreover, the location in a larger tourist area plays a significant role. The characteristics of a given destination always remain the attracting factors! Expectations concerning the effects of HSR must be discussed when cities should pay to obtain this service. These surveys should be improved by other interviews in the future, for instance during summer. Moreover it will be very interesting to propose further work on other case studies in Europe, for example in Spain, with Portaventura Park or at Gardaland in Italy.
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NOTES
1. We have chosen to not distinguish tourism and excursion in this article because in our survey, the variable “transport mode” is not linked with the variable “length of stay” (more and/or less than a day). 2. In 2013 Futuroscope is the 5th park in terms of attendance in the international classification. 3. SNELAC is a professional organization representing recreation sites. http://www.snelac.com/ 4. Source: Les Échos, 13 June 2000. Available at http://www.lesechos.fr/13/06/2000/LesEchos/ 18171-020-ECH_la-gare-d-euro-disney-n-accueille-que-4-000-voyageurs-par-jour.htm [Accessed May 2016]. 5. The department is an intermediate French administrative unit between the region and the municipality. 6. An urban area is a French statistical unit defined by the National Statistical Institute (INSEE), which corresponds to a zone encompassing an urban area of built-up growth and its commuter belt (INSEE).
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7. http://www.insee.fr/fr/themes/tableau.asp?reg_id=99&ref_id=t_5001R; Note that all stays are not necessarily tourist stay. 8. This ranking is challenged by other cities such as London or Bangkok (Mastercard Global destination cities Index 2014). 9. This service has been extended to a further eight stations in the north and west of France: Tourcoing, TGV Haute Picardie, Nantes, Rennes, Le Mans, Angers, Roissy Charles de Gaulle TGV et Massy TGV, in December 2015. 10. RFF was the France’s rail infrastructure manager between 1997 and 2014. It was then re- integrated into SNCF as SNCF Réseau. 11. "Convention relative à la desserte ferroviaire des gares de Châtellerault, du Futuroscope, de Poitiers, d'Angoulême et de Libourne", available at http://www.lavienne86.fr/182-lgv-sea- vienne.htm (in French, retrieved 04.07.2016). The agreement was signed by the State, local and regional authorities, and the railway infrastructure manager (RFF at the time). 12. Since December 2014, 22 regional trains (TER) per day call at Futuroscope. 13. Some trains are B-trains. 14. Additional connections (Marne-laVallée-Chessy, Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle) may exist including summer holidays. Direct connections with Lille and Strasbourg are only from Futuroscope. 15. January 2013. Source: computed from OAG datasets. 16. Source: Poitiers Airport. 17. Comparison with national figures is not presented because no similar, nation-wide data is available; in addition, the sample includes foreigners. 18. I.e. independent worker. 19. This justifies why not all the variables listed are reported in each model. 20. An organized group is a group with different men and women who travel together without necessarily be relatives. An organized travel is a travel organized by a man or a woman who buy for example the transport ticket and the ticket for the Park in a package. 2 2 21. The models have a good explanatory power R = 0.564; R adj = 0.558 for Disneyland and 2 2 R =0.788; R adj= 0.785 for Futuroscope, all parameters are highly significant and there is no multicolinearity problem, as evidenced by the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) values among independent variables. 22. One quarter of the tourists who travelled by HSR in Futuroscope consider that the promotional offer has influenced him/her (Beaumont, 2014). 23. As mentioned above there were no other types of rail alternatives at Futuroscope station. 2 2 24. This Model 2 has a good explanatory power (R =0.433; R adj =0.423) all parameters are highly significant and there is no multicollinearity problem (VIF) among independent variables
2 2 25. This Model has a good explanatory power (R =0.704; R adj=0.699), all parameters are highly significant and there is no multicollinearity problem (VIF) among independent variables. 26. http://www.lavienne86.fr/cms_viewFile.php?idtf=4135&path=f4%2F4135_706_MOTION-LGV- SEA.pdf
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ABSTRACTS
There is a growing but controversial literature concerning the link between high-speed rail (HSR) services and the tourism market. The aim of this paper is to identify this link in the case of two theme parks, namely Disneyland Paris and Futuroscope Parks, both served by an HSR station. Two revealed preference surveys were carried out interviewing tourists at both stations, with the objective of investigating the influence of HSRs on their decision to visit these theme parks. The results significantly diverge. In the case of Disneyland, tourists declared that the presence of HSR was fundamental in the choice of the destination; they would not have come without it. On the contrary, in the case of Futuroscope, tourists stated that HSR was not relevant. Indeed they would have come to Futuroscope in any case, also without this service. Moreover, the link between HSR and visiting other places close to these parks is also very different. These two case studies show again that the relationship between HSR and the local economic development in general and tourism in particular is very different according to places. HSR does not always contribute to the tourism market even in the case of a “stay tourism”.
Si une littérature abondante se développe concernant le lien entre desserte ferroviaire à grande vitesse et tourisme, les résultats sont très controversés. L’objectif de cet article est d’identifier ce lien dans le cas de deux parcs à thème, Disneyland Paris et le Futuroscope, tous deux desservis par une gare TGV. Deux enquêtes fondées sur les préférences révélées ont été menées auprès de touristes pour tester l’influence de la desserte ferroviaire à grande vitesse sur leur décision de venir dans le parc à thème. Les résultats divergent fortement. Alors que dans le cas de Disneyland, la grande vitesse ferroviaire est importante puisque les touristes ne seraient pas venus sans elle, ce n’est pas le cas du Futuroscope : les touristes seraient venus même sans la desserte. Par ailleurs le lien entre la desserte et le fait de visiter d’autres lieux proches des parcs est aussi très différent. Ces deux cas montrent à nouveau que le lien entre la grande vitesse ferroviaire et le développement économique en général et le tourisme en particulier est très différent selon les lieux : la grande vitesse ne bénéficie pas toujours au tourisme même dans le cas d’un tourisme de destination.
INDEX
Mots-clés: desserte ferroviaire à grande vitesse, Parcs à thème, marché du tourisme, choix de destination Keywords: high-Speed Rail service, theme parks, tourism market, destination choice
AUTHORS
MARIE DELAPLACE Université de Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée - Ecole d’Urbanisme de Paris - Lab’Urba, [email protected]
FRANCESCA PAGLIARA Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering - University of Naples Federico II, [email protected]
Belgeo, 3 | 2016 114
ANDREA LA PIETRA Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering - University of Naples Federico II, [email protected]
Belgeo, 3 | 2016