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• The correlation between the economic development and the HSR construction is analyzed. • Uses a GWR model to examine the implications of HSR to the economic developments of Chinese cities. • The Cities obtaining HSR benefits are identified. Based on the situation of high-speed railway (HSR) construction in the past decade in China, as well as China's latest national railway network planning proposal, this paper studies the correlation between the economic development and the opportunity of obtaining HSR infrastructure investment for Chinese cities in different periods over time span 2007–2030. The "winners" and "losers" of obtaining HSR infrastructure investments are determined and the reason is explained by a geographically weighted regression (GWR) model. According to the findings, the spatiotemporal development strategy of China's HSR is revealed. Further, the implications of the HSR for the economic development of Chinese cities are presented. It hopes that the results presented in this paper could facilitate Chinese cities with the appropriate urban developing policies for both the economy promotion and HSR infrastructure construction; moreover, the rapid development of China's economy and HSR can bring a good example to other countries in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on China’s latest national railway network planning proposal, the connectivity and accessibility indices of China’s high-speed railway network (CHSRN) in different time periods are computed to evaluate the implications of high-speed rail (HSR) for Chinese cities. An overall index for measuring the connectivity-accessibility of cities on the HSR network is proposed based on three indicators: (a) the Beta index, to reflect the connectivity of the HSR, (b) the number of reachable counties by HSR within the 500-km domain of a city, to reflect the location-based accessibility of the HSR, and (c) the population of the reachable places by HSR within the 500-km domain of a city, to reflect the potential-based accessibility of the HSR. Finally, the differences in the normalized connectivity-accessibility levels of different categories of cities are qualified to measure the impact of China’s future national HSR network on the potential development of cities. It is found that “Mid-to-Long-Term Railway Network Plan (Revised in 2016)”, if fully realized, would profoundly change the HSR connectivity/accessibility of different cities. Most notably, cities in the Yangtze River Delta would suffer the most whereas cities of the central and western regions would gain the most. This could potentially contribute to, or bring about new changes in, the socioeconomic landscapes in China. The methodological contribution of this paper is twofold. Firstly, an overall index to evaluate the comprehensive connectivity and accessibility levels of the HSR network is designed. Secondly, this paper investigates how to qualify the impact of the future HSR network on different tiers of cities in different time periods according to the change of the overall connectivity/accessibility index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]