High-Speed Rail Demand: Before-and-After Evidence from the Italian Market

Recent openings of new high-speed rail (HSR) lines in Italy, together with the April 2012 entrance of a new private operator in the Italian HSR market in competition with the national incumbent, have created the conditions for an investigation of long-distance travel demand. In this paper, we present some empirical evidences on the evolution of national passenger demand before and after HSR major openings, a unique case study based on source data, a retrospective survey and extensive counts on board trains, gathered between 2008 and 2011. Results show a significant increase of traffic volume by rail due to the introduction of HSR and we estimate short-term direct HSR demand elasticities with respect to travel time in the range of – 1.5 and – 2.1, and in the range – 0.7 to – 1.1 in terms of HSR modal shares. The different elasticity values confirm the presence of a strong “induced demand” effect