High-Speed Rail opportunities around metropolitan regions: Madrid and London

The original main aim of high-speed rail (HSR) was to link big metropolitan areas 400–600 km apart. Recently, intermediate HSR stations have also been created in suburban areas or small cities within the limits of metropolitan areas (up to 100 km), opening up new metropolitan transportation opportunities, notably the strengthening of inward and outward commuting and through traffic across the metropolis. The argument advanced in this paper is under what conditions HSR could facilitate the development of small HSR suburban cities as special subcenters of the metropolitan area with particularly good connections to the metropolitan center and to other distant metropolises. The paper focuses on a comparative study of this new type of metropolitan HSR by analyzing the Madrid (Toledo, Segovia, and Guadalajara stations), Spain, and the London (Ashford, Ebbsfleet, and Stratford stations) cases. Infrastructure layout, station typologies, and rail services are compared together with each city's territorial contexts, activities, and connections with other transport modes. This case-study approach, taking account of specific circumstances and contexts, facilitates the understanding of the HSR impact on metropolitan development, offering new transport alternatives.