| Popis: |
High-speed rail is often welcomed as a mean of increasing the attractiveness of the rail system. Contrary to the expectations, ex-post and ex-ante cost-benefit analyses for major existing and planned high-speed rail (HSR) lines in Europe show that most of the lines underperform socioeconomically. While this underperformance is often due to cost overruns as well as demand overestimations, the fact is that HSR requires (very) high demand levels to be economically feasible. Particularly business travelers are important for providing the needed patronage, which only occurs if the connected metropolitan regions have enough population and an appropriate level of existing business relations to generate this demand. At the same time, wider economic impacts are often sluggish or non-existent for most recent projects, which shows that the rationale for HSR. Based on these findings we draw conclusions for the future development of HSR in Europe. While each project has to be evaluated on its own merits, the overall picture does make a strong case for a reduction in design speeds so that such projects become more cost-effective and therefore socioeconomically and environmentally sustainable. The achieved cost reductions open up resources for more cohesive network developments which can be a better strategy for improving the overall attractivity of the rail system. |
