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This paper summarises a roundtable held in New Delhi, India, on the 18th and 19th December, 2013. This roundtable was convened to examine the key factors that drive the costs of High-Speed Rail (HSR) investment and review the economic benefits delivered by HSR services. This summary draws on a series of presentations made to the roundtable including an international review (Nash, 2013a) and national reviews from France (Crozet, 2013a), Japan (Kurosaki, 2013a), China (Wu, 2013a), Italy (Croccolo, 2013), the UK (Nash, 2013b) and Chinese Taipei (Chang, 2013). In addition, a series of presentations surveyed the prospects for HSR in India, including contributions from Singh, Pillai, Goyal, Raghuram and Pal (all 2013), whilst a presentation on Korea (Lee, 2012) and earlier work on HSR (Asian Institute of Transport Development, 2007) were tabled. This report is also informed by introductory remarks made by Montek Singh Ahluwalia of the Planning Commission of the Government of India, Mallikarjun Khan of the Indian Railways, and K.L. Thapar of the Asian Institute of Transport Development.
In the rest of this introductory section we will outline what is meant by HSR for the purposes of this roundtable and set out a very brief history. We will then in section 2 outline some of the key objectives of the roundtable. In section 3 we will consider the related issue of the key objectives for HSR investments. The kernel of this paper will focus on the cost and benefits of HSR (section 4), including consideration of demand impacts, costs, benefits and pricing and competition. The conditions for financial and social break-even will be considered in section 5 and funding issues examined in section 6. The Indian context will be considered in section 7, before some conclusions are drawn in section 8.

China has suffered railway capacity constraints for more than several decades and the need for a large increase in rail capacity has been viewed as the primary challenge. The former Chinese Ministry of Railways believed that building a national wide high-speed railway (HSR) network was the most efficient solution to China’s rail capacity problems. By 2012, 9 000 km of HSR line has been completed which accounted more than half of the total in the World and the other 9 000 km HSR line is either under construction or in the planning stage. This paper attempts to discuss the initial operational, financial and economic result of such a large scale HSR investment in China where the establishment of an appraisal system for a HSR project is still underway and the public data in need are not available. Based on some trial studies carried out on several HSR projects, however, the paper shows that except for a limited amount of HSR projects in the most developed areas of the country, the initial financial and economic performance of most HSR lines are generally much poorer than expected. The scale of investment seems to be difficult to justify, given that investment in HSR lines is very expensive, especially for those with design speed of 350 km/h, and the high level of debt funding. Moreover the values of time of the ordinary Chinese are still low by European standards. For a developing country planning HSR projects, one lesson that can be learnt from China is that it would be ideal if a comprehensive appraisal can be taken into account before investing in HSR. Such appraisal includes examination of different options for technical and operational standards, timing of investment, construction scale and pace, train operational scheme and service level, pricing and regional development policy (political consideration). At the very least, a step by step development strategy should be adopted to cope with the huge uncertainties and risks.

This paper will start by a general review of the costs and benefits of high-speed rail, of how they are measured in cost-benefit analysis and of the circumstances in which benefits may be expected to exceed costs. It is concluded that the three main factors determining economic success are construction costs, value of time saving per passenger and traffic volume. At typical construction costs and values of time savings something like 9 million passengers per annum are needed to justify a line in cost-benefit analysis terms, and very many more before it becomes financially profitable. We then turn to the British experience of the appraisal of high-speed rail, both for HS1 – the high-speed line already open between London and the Channel Tunnel, and for HS2 – the proposed line linking London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. Controversies over a number of issues, including the value of business travel time savings and wider economic benefits, are discussed. It is concluded that favourable circumstances for High-Speed Rail are typically the result of a combination of low construction costs (often brought about by avoiding the need for tunnelling), high values of time savings per passenger (a wealthy country with a lot of existing travel by rail) and high population (either very large cities or cities located in a corridor which may be served by a single line).

From its origin with the Tokaido Shinkansen in 1964, High-Speed Rail (HSR), defined here as new rail lines capable of operating speeds of 250 kilometres per hour or more, has grown relatively slowly over the last 50 years, with the World HSR network as of late 2013 standing at under 22 000 km. However, the network has been growing rapidly in recent years. With the first opening as recently as 2007, China has already an HSR network of almost 10 000 km. with a further 9 000 km under construction (out of a worldwide total of 14 000 km of line under construction).

In 1975, France was the first European country to embark on the high-speed rail (HSR) odyssey. Regarded as something of a niche activity initially, high-speed rail has become a national priority. The lines currently under construction will bring the HSR network to 2 600 km by 2017. The French “model” gives us a basic lesson: geography (size of the cities and distance between them) is the crucial factor of success and determines the economic profitability. Due to the lack of new profitable lines, France is now facing some limits to HSR network extensions. It is not surprising; therefore, that in 2013 the French Government declared a slowdown if not a halt to all new HSR works. After 2017, only the Bordeaux- Toulouse line might see the light of day: the other lines for which local politicians lobbied so forcibly pose formidable financing problems.

The high-speed railway system, namely Shinkansen, was initially introduced by the Japanese National Railways (JNR) in 1964. As JNR was reformed in 1987, the schemes for construction and operation of Shinkansen were also modified accordingly. This paper primarily discussed Shinkansen’s effects on the operating companies and tried to evaluate the financial effects of Shinkansen operation depending on its traffic density. The study also showed that Shinkansen transport is competitive against other transport modes and is increasing its transport revenue by a much higher rate than conventional lines operated by those railways. Along with the passenger increase in the inter-city services such as the Tokaido and Sanyo Shinkansen Lines, the number of Shinkansen commuters has been also increasing especially around Tokyo metropolitan area. As a result, the share of revenue brought from Shinkansen operation has been increasing in those railway companies in Japan.

The purpose of this presentation is to examine a specific rail transport sector, namely high-speed (HS) rail, in Italy. This analysis will cover the main features of the Italian HS system by studying aspects such as: the legislative framework, infrastructure, services, traffic data and market shares, in addition to regulatory matters.