Approach to assessing the effects of the high-speed rail development: world experience and prospects for Russia

Abstract

The transport industry is one of the key components of the Russian economy, not only generating a substantial amount of gross value added, but also ensuring the spatial connectivity of the country's territories. Acceleration of technological progress, introduction of new technologies in various industries require corresponding increase in cargo and passenger transportation, which implies speeding up the development of high-speed transportation, following the path most intensively developing countries took in the last decade. On the global scale, high-speed rail transport is confidently occupying a niche in the range of 400-800 km when organizing mass transportation and ensuring the shortest travel time. In Russia, high-speed rail service is just beginning to develop as part of the goals and objectives set forth in Presidential Decree No. 204 of May 7, 2018 and the Comprehensive Plan for the Modernization and Expansion of Mainline Infrastructure, the Program for organizing high-speed and high-speed rail service in the Russian Federation. At the same time, despite numerous studies of the quantitative effects of investment in transport infrastructure, the effects of high-speed rail service development have not been studied in practice in the domestic economic literature. This determines high relevance of such a study, as well as an assessment of the positive effects of the development of high-speed rail communication in Russia within the framework of scenario analysis. The purpose of the study is to develop an approach and conduct scenario assessments of the socio-economic effects of the development of high-speed railway communication in Russia. Main goals: a review of approaches to assessing the effects of HSR, analysis of strategic plans for the development of HSR in Russia, two-ways effects assessment: at the country panel and at the regional level in a simulation model. The research methods include economic and mathematical modeling and economic analysis based on model complexes built at RANEPA, particularly a prototype spatial simulation model of the Russian economy. The object of the research is the effects of the development of high-speed railway communication in Russia. Key results: based on cross-country data, it is shown that the development of both high-speed and express rail service contributes significantly to economic growth: the elasticity of GDP per capita for the length of high-speed and express rail lines is 0.029–0.036 and 0.042-0.048 respectively, for the presence of HSR - 0.125. Scenario analysis based on a simulation model also demonstrates an increase in population mobility, cost of living, and other indicators in the regions where HSR is projected to be built

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