The effect of the reduction of the Hungarian railway network in 2009 on accessibility

Dusek, Tamás (2011) The effect of the reduction of the Hungarian railway network in 2009 on accessibility. Regional Statistics : journal of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, 1. pp. 29-43. ISSN 2063-9538

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Abstract

There are two aims of this study. Firstly, to give a quantitative overview on the changing railway accessibility due to the reduction of the railway network in 2009 in Hungary. Secondly, to discuss various forms of detour indices, the main method of analysis. From previous quantitative analyses of the Hungarian railway network, Csaba Kovács’s (1973) study is to be noted, in which he analysed the geographical location of 197 settlements on the railway network. Gábor Szalkai’s (2001) study included dynamic comparisons in addition to the static characteristics of the railway network at that time. In addition, it described the impacts of unmounting the circular railway network due to the Treaty of Trianon after the First World War, of mutilating the branch line network after 1968, and of a potential new Kecskemét-Dunaújváros-Szolnok line on accessibility. The present study diverges primarily in two aspects from these analyses. On the one hand, it concerns a smaller railway network after the reduction of railway network in 2007 and in 2009. As the study also aims to analyse the impact on accessibility of closed branch lines after the schedule change in December 2009, it deals with two networks (smaller than the ones examined in earlier studies). However, it does not deal directly with the impact of restarting some lines in June and December 2010. On the other hand, the set of data used is wider in the sense that it uses actual schedule data regarding temporal accessibility between stations. The study is concerned both with descriptive analysis of situation and temporal comparison; however, it does not deal with economic, cost-effective, environmental, schedule and other concerns of railway transport, but focuses solely on its supply-side. Traffic data would be interesting for weighted calculations with the particular network elements, but these are not available. I do not touch upon conceptual issues of accessibility, which are well described in Tamás Fleischer’s two studies (Fleischer 2008a, 2008b). In the present analysis, accessibility means whether a given settlement can be approached by train, and if so, how far it is from the other settlements

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