Download This PaperHigh-Speed Railways and the Spread of Covid-19
Travel Behaviour and Society (2022)
30 Pages Posted: 26 Aug 2022
Date Written: June 9, 2022
Abstract
High-speed railways (HSRs) greatly decrease transportation costs and facilitate the movement of goods, services, and passengers across cities. In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, however, HSRs may contribute to the cross-regional spread of the new coronavirus. This paper evaluates the role of HSRs in spreading Covid-19 from Wuhan to other Chinese cities. We use train frequencies in 1971 and 1990 as instrumental variables. Empirical results from gravity models demonstrate that one more HSR train originating from Wuhan each day before the Wuhan lockdown increases the cumulative number of Covid-19 cases in a city by about 10 percent. The empirical analysis suggests that other transportation modes, including normal-speed trains and airline flights, also contribute to the spread of Covid-19, but their effects are smaller than the effect of HSRs. This paper’s findings indicate that transportation infrastructures, especially HSR trains originating from a city where a pandemic broke out, can be important factors promoting the spread of an infectious disease.
Note:
Funding Information: Jindong Pang and Shulin Shen thank the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71903145 and 71903060, respectively).
Conflict of Interests: The authors have no competing interests to declare and there is no financial or personal interest or belief that could affect our objectivity.
Keywords: Covid-19; pandemic; high-speed rails; transportation infrastructure
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation