High Speed Railway Hubs in European Medium-Sized Cities: The Case of the ENTER.HUB Network

1. MEDIUM-SIZED CITIES IN “HUB AND SPOKE” SYSTEMS

The “Hub and Spoke” concept represents the nodal and radial component of a complete urban transport network. It can be defined as the centre of diverse activities connected by multiple spokes to other locations and functionalities. The term of Hub was initially attached to multifunctional centres, especially large airports, concentrating different means of circulation including air, train and motorways, and therefore mostly dedicated to major metropolitan areas. Today, this concept applies also to High Speed Railway (HSR) stations, as the latter connect optimally long distance travellers (business, tourism) with local networks and equally provides a new focus point between multimode of circulation and diverse layers of activity. In fact, a same Hub infrastructure usually contains a major and several secondary Hubs. As they integrate a large amount of nodes and functions, Hubs are generally huge, monumental and space-consuming buildings, housing internalized places, and therefore preferably built in isolated locations [1].

Ten Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) corridors already connect or should soon connect most major EU metropolitan areas, especially national and regional capitals, in other words they tend to link together large cities where “Hub and Spoke” patterns already exist. This situation naturally “favours the large central cities they connect, especially their urban cores, and this may threaten the position of more peripheral cities” [2]. The impact of HSR can have integrative effects but can also fragment territories [3]. Indeed, HSR Hubs benefit in priority to major metropolitan areas and may disadvantage smaller urban agglomerations [4]. The economic windfall promised by HSR promoters is not uniformly distributed along a corridor, resulting in possible winners and losers [5]. In reality, HSR impact on urban areas depends more on the “pre-existent potential of an urban region” [6] whether this potential is economic, patrimonial, touristic or educational, than on the size of a city and its distance to a major HSR Hub. Most observers precise that HSR possibly facilitates existing growth but does not automatically create new growth [6].

Medium-sized cities reveal another ambiguous relationship to transportation systems in general and to HSR in particular. In a way, public transport increases, as well local as long distance, and concerns all levels of population: workers, students, elder people, tourists, etc. But at the same time, low-density sprawl keeps up a car culture that is usually anchored in the local way of life. This economic and social dilemma is reinforced by a still growing importance given to car infrastructures and a certain lack of efficiency of public transportation. On the other hand, HSR may also carry a feeling of isolation for citizens living in medium-sized cities, even if located at the edge of large metropolitan areas. Such situations increase the danger of a vast migration of residents, companies and services towards larger urban centres, developing the fear of transforming the smaller city into a dormitory town. Finally, from an urban point of view, HSR lines and stations are often considered as being a barrier between territories, districts and people. For all these different reasons, probably among others, HSR may be suffered as a worrying improvement in medium-sized cities [7].

2. TWO SCALES OF INTERACTIONS

Still, in many ways, HSR Hubs can also amplify local opportunities, facilitate exchange between different categories of population, extend urban comfort by breaking it out into the city, create identity through people’s experience, and recall memory of a local urban environment. Even if the impact of such opportunities is usually difficult to measure, it is possible to observe it at different scales through simple indicators of urban quality as improvement of local public space, image of the city and its services, development of economic, educational, cultural and social activities not only inside the city but also along the Hub’s spokes and the TEN-T corridor.

ENTER HUB partners had in common to believe that the change they are facing by hosting a Hub can have a positive impact on local mobility, and that a connection to HSR may be beneficial to the attractiveness of their cities and the quality of life. They consider this change as an opportunity to reduce car dependency, to optimize and coordinate all modes of transportation towards a multimodal complex system connecting speed and slowness, to develop interaction between a wide diversity of uses, and to reach the expectations of different types of citizens and visitors. Facing such ambitious challenges, ENTER HUB partners share similar intentions: struggling to limit land use; seeking to enlarge economic, job and eventually touristic performances of their catchment areas; taking advantage of the wide range of opportunities Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) provide; bringing residential areas closer in distance and time to economic and cultural activities; and last but not least, planning so called “human scale” new districts and public spaces based upon the attractiveness of the expected Hub.

3. AN ATTEMPT TO DEFINE A HSR HUB FOR MEDIUM-SIZED CITIES

ENTER.HUB partners have gone through diverse aspects of the implementation of a HSR Hub, exchanging experiences at a transnational level and implementing independently Local Action Plans with local stakeholders. Identifying major issues of such an infrastructure in their cities, they have contributed to a common definition of a Hub for medium-sized cities. An urban HSR Hub is first an exchange node towards a multimodal network of private and public transportation. It also stresses diversely the relationship between mobility and the urban territory, being at the same time a gate to the city and a turbine for its re-development. Considering this concept in a medium-sized city, besides of being a major element of its territorial dynamics, a Hub is also a connector between the city and regional, national and international centres standing on the same TENT-T corridor. Therefore, a HSR Hub should be considered from two different points of view: at a global scale connecting the hosting city to most places in the country and in Europe; and at a local scale that narrows people, ideas and activities inside the whole city and its catchment area.

As such, a HSR Hub is at the heart of major challenges like: 1) building up a new identity; 2) favouring sustainable circulation of people, ideas and knowledge; 3) relying on users experience; 4) bringing together different types of population; 5) attracting people and economic activity; 6) producing value [8].

CONCLUSION

Everywhere in Europe, the arrival of HSR impacts strongly the urban development of its hosting city and its catchment area. The longstanding railway station is transformed into a Hub and becomes the heart of this renewal. Large metropolitan areas have taken advantage of these recent establishments in the last decade. Medium-sized cities too are also having an opportunity to precise this concept and the conditions for its integration. With definitions such as being a “Red Carpet”, an “Urban Icon”, a “Place for People”, an “Urban Backbone”, a “Net of Services” and a “City Lounge”, ENTER HUB cities have been working over two years on this specificity, involving a large range of stakeholders in order to precise the conditions of implementation and integration of HSR Hubs. At the end of this project, taking advantage of their common and sharing experiences, ENTER.HUB partners are convinced that HSR Hubs increase considerably the accessibility of European medium-sized cities, modifying their geography by bringing them closer to large metropolitan areas along High speed corridors, and enlarging their catchment areas.

Still, in order to reach this specificity, a HSR Hub must keep in constant evolution during its life cycle, that is over the coming decades, as vehicles, their size, comfort, energy resources, accessibility and manoeuvrability will regularly transform the place dedicated to private and public mobility and lead to new services. ICT will also progress considerably, modifying the perception of information in a Hub, increasing the role of social networks and giving a larger place to knowledge. For all these reasons, a Hub needs to be flexible and adaptable. It must be able to evolve easily, be different day and night, during the week and on weekends, in summer and in winter, and above all be able to adapt over time to host new functions, new services, and new ways of life. It should therefore be designed in co-production with all stakeholders including end-users in order to respond to the constraints of present and anticipate possible future needs. As says the Catalan sociologist Manuel Castells: “the space of flows and timeless time are the material foundations of a new culture”.

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