The timing of high-speed railway construction affects the allocation efficiency and opportunity cost of transportation resources, as well as regional socio-economic development. Starting from the construction timing influence mechanism, a comprehensive trigger timing analysis framework consisting of city economic attributes, social attributes, and location attributes is established. With with-or-without HSR as the dependent variable, the construction possibility is measured accordingly. The empirical results show that, the city economic characteristics are the primary influencing factors for high-speed railway construction, of which, an average 1% increase in disposable income will lead to more than 0.9% increase in possibility of the provision of high-speed railways, and an average 1% increase in urban market potential or the tertiary industry location entropy will lead to 0.8% increase in possibility of the provision of high-speed railways. Quantitatively speaking, RMB80,000 per capita disposable income is the threshold for the construction of HSR nationwide. Social and location attributes alone cannot trigger high-speed railway construction if other variables are kept constant.