HSR in Portugal

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HSR in Portugal
Francisco Carballo-Cruz NIPE (University of
Minho)
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HSR Topics of interest

• Ability to compete with airplane
• Environmental competitiveness
• Social profitability

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Ability to compete with airplane

• Depends on a number of factors (for example)
• Levels of fares
• HSR in-mode journey-time
• Time-distance from airports to city centre
• Time needed at teminis before departure
• etc.
• The measurement of diversion from air services is
  relevant because affects
• Infrastructure planning decisions (airport
  expansion or delocalisation location of HSR
  stations, etc.)
• Operators strategies (competition and
  cooperation)

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Environmental competitiveness

• The determination of the effective environmental
  competitiveness is important to avoid the
  justification of HSR projects on the grounds of
  their unmeasured potential environmental
  benefits.
• The estimation of the environmental externalities
  for the various modes in operation on a transport
  corridor allows calculating the environmental
  savings from diversion to HSR.

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Social profitability

• The calibration of the social profitability
  levels is relevant to assess the pertinence of
  investing public funds in HSR projects and the
  potential to attract private capital to them.
• This question has not fully explored so far. The
  next step will be to incorporate the wider
  economic effects of the project to obtain a
  complete picture of the costs and benefits of HSR
  introduction.

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Projected HSR network
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Distances and average journey-times by mode
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Demand characterisation
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Modal split without HSR
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Distribution by travel purpose by mode
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HSR vs airplane (I)

• Switching-mode choice model
• Modal choice is explained by
• Travel price
• Travel time
• Access time
• Headway
• Three level experimental design
• 554 air passengers responded the questionnaire
  (response rate of 72)
• 16 invalid
• 414 business
• 124 leisure

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HSR vs airplane (II) Segmentations

• Travel purpose
• Passengers travel patterns
• Spatial criteria
• Passengers characteristics

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HSR vs airplane (III) Full database segmented by
travel purpose
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HSR vs airplane (IV) HSR mode-choice demand
elasticities - Airplane passengers switching to
HSR
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HSR vs airplane (V) Access time elasticities
-Airplane business passengers switching to HSR
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HSR vs airplane (VI) Modal shares predictions

• HSR market share
• 70.5 for business travel
• 85.0 for leisure travel

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HSR vs airplane (VII) Scatted plot of rail
in-mode time and rail air-rail market share
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Environmental competitiveness (I)

• Types of externalities
• Air pollution and climate change effects average
  costs (cumulative nature)
• Noise impacts marginal costs
• Pollutants included Carbon monoxide, oxides of
  nitrogen, non methane volatile organic compounds,
  sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide, methane and
  nitrous oxide.
• Estimates for emissions are based on direct and
  indirect emission indexes and on the
  corresponding shadow prices.
• Noise estimates are calibrated by employing
  adjusted NSDIs, the levels of noise exposure and
  the marginal noise nuisance by mode.

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Environmental competitiveness (II)Externalities
from emissions ()
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Environmental competitiveness (III)Noise
externality ()
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Environmental competitiveness (IV) Environmental
externality ()
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Social profitability (I)Modal split without HSR
(2012)
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Social profitability (II)Modal split with HSR
(2012)
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Social profitability (III)Costs and benefits of
HSR projects

• Construction and operating costs
• Operating revenues
• Variations of operating revenues and costs in
  operators of competing transport services
• Variations of operating revenues and costs in
  operators of transport infrastructures
• HSR passengers time savings
• Reduction of the external costs of road
  accidents
• Time savings of road modes users due to the
  reduction in congestion
• Reduction of the environmental external costs
  (air pollution, climate change and noise)
• Intrusion and interference effects
• Wider economic benefits
• Other effects on regional development.

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Social profitability (IV) Hypotheses

• Demand elasticity in relation to GDP 1.25
• Average economic growth 2
• Ramp-up effects based on Preston and Dargay
  (2005)
• Induced demand 25
• Social discount rate 5 (EC, 1997). For Portugal
  based on pure time preference consideration 5.6
  (Evans and Sezer, 2005)
• All flows valued at factor cost (rate of indirect
  taxation 22.3)
• All flows in 2007 money
• Appraisal period 35 years

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Social profitability (V)Total investment in the
HSR system
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Social profitability (VI) VoT by mode
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Social profitability (VII)Accident and casualty
risk in the A-1 motorway
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Social profitability (VIII)Accident unit cost in
Portugal
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Social profitability (IX)Corrected environmental
externalities
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Social profitability (X) Analysed scenarios
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Social profitability (XI) Discounted costs and
benefits
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Conclusions

• HSR has strong ability to compete with air
  services in the Lis-Por corridor. Infrastructure
  planning decisions should be integrated.
  Cooperation between air carriers and the HSR
  operator may lead to the expansion of medium and
  long distance markets.
• HSR is not as environmental friendly as policy
  makers sometimes state. Its environmental
  competitiveness depends significantly on the
  electricity-mix of the country and on the
  specific routing. For appraisal purposes it is
  important to take into account the impacts of
  generated traffic.
• Due to the high up-front costs required by HSR
  projects, only those in corridors with very high
  levels of demand will be socially profitable. The
  inclusion of wider economic benefits in the
  appraisal of HSR projects is needed to obtain a
  complete picture of the potential effects. An
  effort should be done to improve the
  methodologies devoted to measure the wider
  benefits generated by HSR projects.