Spatial and social equity implications for High-Speed Railway lines in Northern Italy

The introduction of High-Speed Railways (HSRs) redefines the connections between main territorial hubs, by reducing the travel times and guaranteeing better accessibility. Such infrastructures bring advantages in terms of travel performances, but have also some drawbacks especially for those, generally, mid-size cities that are downgraded. This paper introduces the Spatial and Social Equity Railway Indexes (SpREi and SoREI) to assess the variation in travel times, number of connections, prices and population affected by these changes. Such indexes are then applied in the north-western part of Italy (between the regions of Piedmont and Liguria) to analyse the performances of Alessandria and Asti, two cities that were part of the previous main line Turin-Rome, but have been downgraded to a secondary line after the opening of the new HSR. Their SpREI and SoREI reveal that, despite a slight reduction of travel times, the number of direct connections has decreased with a significant increase in ticket prices. Such performances are then compared to Turin and Genoa, the two main territorial hubs, revealing contradictory results: on the one hand, Turin has registered a performance boost in terms of accessibility and variations in ticket prices. On the other hand, Genoa has seen a low increase in fares and in the number of available connections, whereas average travel times have even increased, thus confirming that the introduction of HSRs may generate inequalities in the territorial connections and hence possible need of compensation by policy makers.