Infrastructure costs and benefits of European high-speed rail

Abstract

The development of new technologies has significantly influenced railways modernization and has caused the appearance of high-speed rail which represent a safe, comfortable and ecologically sustainable way of transportation. The high-speed rail present a big step in a relation to conventional railways, where the biggest difference is speed which even entails a change of other organizational and operational parameters, better utilization of trains, higher performance of manpower and better service to users.  That is visible in many cities around the world where high-speed trains are used by billions of users. In the EU there is no unique high-speed railway network, besides that in many EU member countries various operational models are applied. The future of the high-speed railways market depends on political, economical and technical factors and challenges as high infrastructure costs, various rates of return on investment and the negative effects of economic crises. The main objective of the paper is to analyze infrastucture costs of high-speed rail in Europe and benefits such us  time savings, higher reliability, comfort, safety, reducing pollution and the release of capacity in the conventional rail network, roads and airport infrastructure.