Short- and long-term population and project implications of high-speed rail for served cities: analysis of all served Spanish cities and re-evaluation of Ciudad Real and Puertollano

Economic growth theories indicate that infrastructures are necessary but not enough for economic growth, providing the cities they serve with new comparative advantages. Today, 25 years after the first high-speed rail (HSR) services opened in Spain and after a complete economic cycle with the longest-running European HSR network, this network can be treated as a territorial laboratory for testing the relationship between new transport infrastructures and population growth. This article compares the population evolution of each HSR city with those of Spain overall, non-HSR municipalities, a random sample of non-HSR cities and similar non-HSR cities. This article also re-evaluates the implications for two small cities served by the first HSR line by means of analyses similar to those undertaken 10–15 years ago to evaluate both the long-term implications and those that are less permanent and have either changed or disappeared. These analyses show that population growth depends on each city’s degree of transportation changes, the time elapsed, and the location and size of the city. This article concludes that in the longer term, projects and strategies will be more or less successful depending on their relation to transport.