ABSTRACT

As the most popular form of major trans-regional infrastructure, the expansion of high-speed railway (HSR) has resulted in some inequities, such as imbalanced development between regions and apparent gaps between social groups. This paper innovatively proposes the concept of “end-to-end equality (ETEE)” to comprehensively evaluate the equity of the whole process of public access to HSR services from three chronological phases: equality of opportunity, procedural equality, and equality of outcome. Subsequently, the impact pathways between the three are analyzed by means of structural equation modeling, using the Xiamen–Shenzhen high-speed railway (XS HSR) as an example. The following main conclusions are then drawn: For one thing, all three stages have prominent positive influences on the ETEE of HSR, where equality of outcome has the largest influence and equality of opportunity has the smallest. For another, procedural equality influences equality of outcome, whereas equality of opportunity is influenced weakly, if at all. It is revealed that procedural equality and equality of outcome are the key points for realizing end-to-end equality of China's HSR, which makes an important implication for the construction and operation of high-speed railway and provides a comprehensive assessment framework for the ETEE of major trans-regional infrastructures.