The effects of transportation investments on regional economy: a case of konya high speed train

In the planning literature, the determining effects of transportation investments on the economy and practical actions of politicians are frequently on the agenda. Due to its ability to reduce the distance between different spatial units, transportation infrastructure investments have been seen as strategically important decisions in terms of the formation and development of economic spaces. It, thus, is known that there have been important initiatives towards regional transportation investments in Turkey since 2000s, and that these investments increase accessibility among important economic regions and lead to the enrichment of spatial and functional efficiency. High Speed Train (YHT) investments, which come to the forefront as a new transportation policy form for Turkey among these investments, have brought a new perspective for regional transportation strategy. The YHT network, which connects regions being in a dominant position by economic activities, has transformed the regions into open markets in terms of economic development dynamics and increased their attractiveness as important investment areas. In this framework, it is aimed to reveal the effects of HST transportation investments on the economic landscape in Turkey. Considering the deficiencies of the traditional methods of the neoclassical school to describe the broad effects on the economy of transportation investments in regional development paradigms, the theoretical framework of the study has been based on economic geography approaches, since the economic geography approach provides a comprehensive analytical framework for the analysis of the causal mechanisms linking transportation and the economy. Within the framework of this approach, a point of view based on the travel behaviours of YHT investments for the socio-economic development of Konya has been developed in the causal relationships between space and sectoral data in revealing the variables used for the efficiency of transportation types and the effects of the YHT network on the economic landscape. Thus, in the study, it was determined that the effects of YHT tend to be concentrated especially in the city centre of the region and the effect in the city centre spreads to the region through different transportation modes. In addition, it has been determined that the changes in travel accessibility are important in terms of the socio-economic development trends of the districts.