Socio-Economic Impacts of Occurrences on Railways

Abstract

The paper presents partial outputs of an applied research project aimed at evaluating the socio-economic impacts of occurrences emerging on the railway and their reflection into the economic evaluation of railway construction projects. The article builds on the research results presented within previous scientific articles where the unit impacts of sub-categories of occurrences on the Czech railways were determined using a detailed Database of Occurrences for the 2011-2018 period. These impacts were related both to one railway station and one kilometre of the wide line for the occurrence sub-categories. The values obtained were subsequently verified on case studies of specific railway infrastructure projects implemented in the Czech Republic. The results of the case studies raised the need to create an alternative methodology for the evaluation of socio-economic impacts, which would more accurately reflect the real situation on the railway. The aim of the paper is to modify the originally designed methodology for evaluating the socio-economic impacts of occurrences into a new methodology, which would relate the impacts of occurrences only to a standard kilometre of wide line, i.e. without taking account of separate impacts of occurrences on one railway station. The proposed methodology was verified on a case study, which compares the real values of socio-economic impacts emerging on the railway in the period under research, the values determined using the original methodology and the values determined according to the newly modified methodology.