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China's High-Speed Railways (HSR) network is the biggest in the world, transporting large numbers of passengers by high-speed trains through urban networks. Little is known about the analytical meaning of the use of two types of flow data, namely, time schedule (transportation mode flow) and passenger flow data, to characterise the configuration of urban networks regarding the potential spatial effects of HSR networks on urban networks. In this article, we compare HSR passenger flow data with time schedule data from 2013 in China within the same analytical framework. The findings show great differences in the strength of cities and links generated using the two different types of flow data. These differences can be explained largely by the socio-economic attributes of the cities involved, such as tertiary employment, GDP per capita, the cities' topological properties (closeness centrality) in HSR networks and institutional factors (hub status), especially for the difference in link strength. The strength of first-tier cities in China with high socio-economic performance and the HSR links connecting core cites and major cities within respective regions tends to be underestimated when using time schedule flows compared with passenger flows. When analysing the spatial structure of HSR and urban networks by means of flows, it is important for urban geographers and transportation planners to consider the meaning of the different types of data with the analytical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The high speed railway (HSR) has played a crucial role in the regional integration of urban networks in China. This paper analyses HSR passenger flows instead of commonly‐used time schedules for measuring different polycentricity in urban networks. Using 2013 origin/destination (O/D) passenger flow data, we analyse the spatial configurations of 99 HSR cities at the national scale in China. In addition, we compare the spatial configurations of three regional urban networks: the Pearl River Delta, the Yangzi River Delta and the Bohai Rim. The outcomes show that the three functional regions connected by HSR are the most dominant polycentric regions in China and that the Bohai Rim is less hierarchical than the other two. We conclude that the comprehensive Chinese HSR networks are largely polycentric, especially in the central and eastern regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the Chinese high-speed railway (HSR) entered the transportation market at a late stage in 2003, its networks have become the world's largest and are currently even growing faster than airline networks. Using the 2013 origin/destination (O/D) passenger flow data instead of commonly used scheduled data, we compare the spatial configurations of the Chinese national urban system in both high-speed railway and airline networks. The results show that HSR-dominant cities and links are located mainly in the middle and eastern parts of China, offering regional connections, whereas air-dominant cities and links are evenly distributed across the whole of China and predominantly offer interregional connections. This is mainly because HSR networks are more focused on connections to cities with high socio-economic performance and are more restricted by the geographical distance between linked cities than the airline networks. Furthermore, HSR networks promote agglomeration economies within cities located along the trunk lines in specific regions, whereas airline networks contribute to more balanced urban development in China. These dimensions indicate that the configuration of urban systems in HSR networks differ largely from that of air networks when measured in terms of passenger flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]