A model of competition between high speed rail and air transport

The aim of the research described in this paper has been to construct a model to enable an analysis to be made of the quality of service in both high speed rail (HSR) and air transport (AT) networks and, on this basis, establish conditions for competition between HSR and AT systems. The model is based on the known physical characteristics of both networks, represented by the number of nodes, the number of links, strategies for linking individual nodes; the system characteristics of the two modes of transport—the set of high speed trains and aircraft used (numbers of seats and unit operating costs); the characteristics of the demand between individual nodes on the network in a given interval of time; and the costs of transport in each system. The chief outputs of the model are: total passenger travel costs between origins and destinations, using HSR and AT, and the minimum total costs of the systems. Both types of costs are used as criteria to establish the conditions for competition between high speed raid (HSR) and air transport (AT).