Citation: Pagliara, F.; Hayashi, Y.; Ram, K.S. High-Speed Rail, Equity and Inclusion. Sustainability 2022, 14, 6710. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su14116710 Received: 20 May 2022 Accepted: 25 May 2022 Published: 31 May 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Editorial High-Speed Rail, Equity and Inclusion Francesca Pagliara 1, * , Yoshitsugu Hayashi 2 and Kallidaikurichi Seetha Ram 3, * 1 Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, 80138 Napoli, Italy 2 Chubu Institute for Advanced Studies, Chubu University, Kasugai-City 487-8501, Japan; y-hayashi@isc.chubu.ac.jp 3 Asian Development Bank Institute and The Center for Spatial Information Science, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8654, Japan * Correspondence: fpagliar@unina.it (F.P.); kseetharam@adbi.org(K.S.R.) 1. Introduction Today, the question of inequality related to transport systems is becoming an issue that governments, at the different territorial scales, should confront in order to find solutions and restrict the consequences. In 2015 the OECD (Centre for Opportunity and Equality) platform was developed with the aim of fostering policies on trends, causes, and consequences of inequalities [1]. Church et al. (2000) [2] introduced seven factors limiting the mobility of socially excluded users, which are as follows: physical exclusion, i.e., physical barriers, such as lack of disabled facilities or timetable information, limiting accessibility to transport services; geographical exclusion which prevents people from accessing transport services, especially those living in rural or peripheral urban areas; exclusion from facilities, which concerns the low accessibility connected with facilities, such as shops, schools, healthcare or leisure services; economic exclusion which represents the high monetary costs of travel inhibiting access to facilities or employment and thus having an impact on incomes; time-based exclusion which refers to other demands on time, such as combined work, household and childcare duties, reducing the time available for travel; fear-based exclusion which deals with the fears for personal safety precluding the use of public spaces and/or transport services; and space exclusion which is the security or space management preventing given groups having access to public spaces, such as first class waiting rooms at stations. Lucas [3] proposed the definition of a “transport poor user” as one to whom some condition may apply, such as: when he/she has no transport alternative which suits his/her physical conditions and capabilities; when the actual transport alternatives do not serve destinations where the user can fulfill his/her daily activity needs; or when the weekly amount of money spent on transport results in the family income falling below the poverty threshold. Moreover, when the user is pushed to spend a long time travelling, causing time poverty and/or social isolation, and when factors such as danger and safety characterize the travel conditions of the user. It is important to clarify that not all socially excluded people are poor and that not all social exclusions concern poor accessibility to transport facilities and services. However, in all countries, low-income people have fewer transport alternatives in addition to having low-quality transport services that offer travel with little comfort and low security [4]. There is an extensive literature on the wider socioeconomic inequality aspects of transport. In the book by Vasconcellos [5], the idea that traditional transport planning has generated an unfair distribution of accessibility is supported and suggestions for new measures towards an equitable and sustainable urban environment are proposed. Banister’s research shows [6] that “today’s transport policy benefits the rich more than the poor. But it is the better-off who are travelling faster and further, leaving the poor in the slow lane and closer to home”. The poor choose the bus more frequently and they Sustainability 2022, 14, 6710. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14116710 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability