Potential Impacts on Accessibility and Consumer Surplus of Improvements of the European Railway System

It is widely accepted that “transport infrastructure endowment influences competiveness of a Region; the provision of investment in transport infrastructure entails positive effects on productivity and growth, even if on the other side, heavy infrastructures (as railway lines) could affect negatively on the environment” (5th Cohesion Report, 2010). This article aims to explore the potential impact of improvements of the passenger rail network in order to evaluate how these could potentially increase accessibility and consumer surplus in EU regions; it summarizes the results of the model simulations carried out with a combination of the TRANSTOOLS rail network and the assignment module of Traffic Analyst.Three different scenarios have been tested by changing speeds on the whole network. The post-processing analysis has been carried out with utilities developed in Matlab, while the results for each zone (at NUTS3 level) have also been reported in easy-to-read ArcGIS maps. The outcomes provide insight into how the demand for passenger rail transport would react and where the highest benefits and costs, in terms of accessibility and consumer surplus gains, can be expected. This information, in turn, can be useful for the prioritization of investment needs and the identification of parts of the rail passenger market where new demand may be generated.