• Understand how railway investments are analyzed using an explicit methodology of economic valuation and which evaluation criteria (technical, economic, socio-environmental, investment, operational, maintenance) are used
• The student will have general technical, economic, socio-environmental evaluation criteria. As well as investment, operational and maintenance.
• Expand your toolkit to assess the financial suitability and/or economic potential of railway lines.

Course content 
Accessibility (people’s ability to reach desired activities) and mobility (physical movement) provide benefits to society, including direct benefits to users (people engaged in the transport activity) and external benefits. Most economic and social activities involve transport and some, such as a life-saving trip to a hospital or delivery of a valuable goods, have extremely large benefits. However, the existence of such benefits does not mean that all travel provides net benefits (benefits exceed costs) nor that increased mobility is necessarily desirable. Beyond an optimal level, additional mobility provides declining and eventually negative marginal benefits.

The economic evaluation of a railway transportation project aims to identify and quantify what is the contribution of that project to the welfare of society. In this course the student will see  that the need for investments has to be evaluated by applying a cost-benefit analysis.

• Investment, maintenance and rehabilitation costs
• Costs in new infrastructures, in expansion of capacity, in rehabilitation or in improvements
• Operation costs
• Maintenance costs
• Evaluation criteria