Abstract:  

Taking a case of the Pan-Yangtze River Delta Region, by using average travel time, economic potential and daily accessibility as the three main evaluation indexes, to explore the influence of high-speed railway on the accessibility of the Pan-Yangtze River Delta Region. In addition, the paper analyses the dynamic changes in accessibility of the Pan-Yangtze River Delta in the presence or absence of high-speed railway exists, and reveals the spatial effect result from the changes. It is conclude as follows:(1) The high-speed railway greatly improved traffic accessibility of the city in Pan-Yangtze River Delta Region, the weighted average travel time was reduced by an average of 50.57%, the average growth rate of the economic potential was 99.62%, and the proportion of the daily exchange area of the provincial administrative center increased to 95.92%;(2) The operation of high-speed railway has led to the effect of space-time compression, location enhancement and the trend of regional integration. Not only it strengthens the social and economic links between cities, but also reshapes the regional spatial pattern;(3) The spatial polarization characteristics of the Pan-Yangtze River Delta region will be further highlighted, because of the spatial imbalance improvement of accessibility. Central cities such as Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hangzhou will exert their regional advantages to generate strong economic growth for neighboring cities, while cities without high-speed railway will be increasingly marginalized due to weaker relative locations, such as Xuancheng and Fuyang. As a result, the “core-edge” pattern after the reorganization of regional space has begun to emerge.