The decrease in travel times, regularity,better quality of the services and improved accessibility are the main success factors of high speed (HS)rail links. In this study, evidence of the impacts of the new HS/HC (highcapacity) rail link between Rome and Naples will be provided on the basisof a survey which will be carried out next March. This rail link can be considered as an example of the second type of HS rail links. Concerning this service, the rail link of 195 km from Rome till Gricignano of Aversa was opened in December 2005. Rail travel times on the new 300 km/h line werereduced from 1 hour and 54 minutes to 87 minutes with a significant improvement in regularity due to less conflict with other trains. The line is not completed yet as the section of 18 km from Gricignano of Aversa to Naples Afragola and the link penetrating the node of Naples are still under construction and they will be completed by 2008. The new rail link connects the metropolitan area of Rome and Naples with a number of residents equal to 4.1 and 3.6 million respectively. A survey was undertaken by Trenitaliaamong train users travelling between Rome and Naples before the HS/HC rail service was opened. It emerged that passengers of Eurostar and Intercitytrains mainly travelled for work purposes, especially office workers and teachers, followed by managers. Direct trains were instead mainly used forstudy purposes. From the time of the inauguration of the HS/HC rail link between Rome and Naples in December 2005 there has been a significant increase of flows between the two metropolitan areas. Moreover this state can be considered transient since a further number of daily services will be introduced in the future and, above all, the travel time will significantlydecrease (from 87 to 55 minutes) thanks to the completion of the service.Moreover data from Autostrade and Trenitalia have highlighted that the use of car and of intercity trains have almost remained unchanged during thefew years of operation of the HS/HC service. It follows that the 40% railincrease above mentioned is mostly due to generated demand. This means that the introduction of the HS/HC service between Rome and Naples has probably had impacts, as expected, on both mobility choices (increase in trip frequency, new trips never done before, etc.) and location choices (people originally living near the place of work now commute). Data gathered will be used first of all to understand this phenomenon and then to estimate both a gravity model to reproduce/forecast generated demand and a mode choice model to reproduce/forecast modal split. Specifically the choice betweencar and rail will be modelled through a diachronic approach. These modelswill be applied to forecast scenarios including both an improvement in the number of supplied services and/or the travel time reduction which will occur after the completion. For the covering abstract see ITRD E145999
Abstract