A longitudinal analysis on the development of regional railway systems in Skåne.

Sammanfattning: During the last two decades a new administrative level between municipality and national has occurred, most referred as regions. Regions should work as a tool for intergrading and achieve growth in the concept of sustainable development (economic, social and environmental sustainable) in a specific area. In order to attain this and to integrate a whole region, even the areas in the periphery, it is needed to have well–designed infrastructural network of nodes and links for both cars and other alternative methods of transportations. During the last decades this development has been questioned mostly because of environmental challenges. This issue together with the concept of regional integration and expansion have done that one today could distinguish a development of alternative and more environmental friendly transportation methods. One of the most discussed solutions of this is regional public railways. In this thesis I have chosen to focus on the development of regional railways in the region of Skåne, whichis located in southern Sweden. The purpose was to analyze if there are any patterns in the development of regional railways when it comes to factors of population, travelling and commuting in and between municipalities, station cities and villages. Furthermore I wanted to connect the factors of population and commuting to a regional concept of regional development, regional expansion, sustainable development and mobility. The results showed that development of regional railways has different impact on a region depending on the distance from a regional center and that the crucial factor is mobility and accessibility. The results shows that station cities and municipalities located less than 20 minutes one-way to a regional center are not affected by introduction of a regional railway station more than on marginal level. Station cities located within 20-50 minutes from a region center have a positive development and areas that are located outside of this crucial time limit are barley not affected at all by investments of new regional railway station when it comes to factors of sustainability, regional expansion and regional development.