High Speed Railways: A Review of Available Evidence on Socio-economic Impacts

High-speed rail in Europe was introduced in 1981 through the opening of Paris-Lyon line in France. Subsequently, additional lines in France have been constructed as well as in other EU countries (e.g. Germany, Spain, Italy). Development of high-speed rail forms a core part of the EU policy to contribute towards an enhanced position of rail in the transport market in order to promote sustainability as specified in earlier Transport White Papers and the 2020 Sustainable and Smart Mobility strategy. Since the 80s the HSR network has increased substantially from less than 600 km length of lines to over 11,000 km in 2021. Although high-speed railways have a significant role in strengthening domestic but also cross-border cohesion of countries (i.e. with shorter travel times, distances between key centres essentially shrink), European border-crossing services by high-speed rail are relatively limited, examples being represented by the routes Paris-London-Brussels-Cologne-Amsterdam, Paris-Turin/Milan and by Barcelona-Perpignan (although the latter doesn’t yet offer a fast connection to the French high-speed network and conveys only few cross-border trains per day). Available evidence highlights that HSR can indeed improve accessibility which in turn may have impacts on the wider economy, through various channels, notably agglomeration benefits, increased competition, imperfect competition and labour market effects. This paper will review the available evidence on socio-economic impacts linked to high-speed rail investments. Particular aspects considered in the paper will be to determine the significance of wider economic impacts alongside the direct transport benefits (e.g. time savings and reductions in GHG emissions).