High-speed rail and office location choices. A stated choice experiment for the Netherlands

High-speed rail is seen as a factor contributing to the attractiveness of a location for economic activities. This paper focuses on how the level-of-service characteristics of railway stations, and in particular the presence of high-speed train services, influence the attractiveness of locations for specific types of offices. The results are presented for a stated choice experiment for location choices of offices in the Netherlands. It is concluded that the availability of high-speed train services contributes to the attractiveness of a location for offices. For internationally-oriented offices the areas around stations with international high-speed train services are attractive because of their good international accessibility. We also found an indication that high-speed train services can raise the status of an office site. In the Netherlands, the domestic high-speed train services are less relevant for location choices, because of the small domestic distances. Besides high-speed train services, other location characteristics that determine how well a site is connected to the railway network are also found to be important for location choices. Thereby differences between offices occur, which can partly be explained by the number of trips to/from an office.

Research highlights
► High-speed train services make a station location more attractive for offices.
► The attractiveness is enhanced by high speed rail’s image and its effect on accessibility.
► The image effect raises the status of an office location.
► HSR accessibility is mainly relevant for offices with an (inter)national orientation.