Abstract: The construction of transportation infrastructure has a profound influence on regional and urban development. The trans-river passage or bridge can greatly enhance the transport and economic connection of the urban agglomerations separated by the river or strait. This research aims to examine the impact of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (HZMB) on the transportation pattern in Pearl River Delta. With the help of ArcGIS Desktop10, the traditional accessibility assessment model was conducted to analyze the changes of accessibility before and after the construction of HZMB. The model was modified to illustrate the non-transportation-network grids in details. The grids were evaluated by geographical factors (water surface, elevation or slope) or land use types instead of being regarded as homogeneous in traditional model. The result shows that the time accessibility of Hong Kong and Zhuhai is greatly improved with the HZMB, more than 28% of the area reduces 1-hour to Hong Kong under the condition of the HZMB, while the other cities in the Delta are not as significantly improved as the former two. The HZMB can sharply reduce the transport cost of the West and East of the Pearl River estuary, and more than 11% and 27% of the region saves the cost for the cars or trucks respectively. With different crossing tolls, the research indicates that the affected region remains the same, but the changed extents of different zones vary considerably. The research believes that the HZMB exerts a significant influence on the transportation pattern of the Pearl River Delta, compresses the time and space between Hong Kong and Zhuhai-Macao, and it significantly improves the importance of Zhuhai-Macao, which may change the Delta from "bi-Hubs" to "tri-Hubs". Finally, this paper analyzes the impact of the HZMB on the industry of commerce and trade, tourism, real estate, regional logistics network and so on. It is concluded that the customs policy and other trans-river passages can exert an potential influence on the HZMB.

Key words: Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, traffic pattern, Pearl River Delta, accessibility, time-space compression