Economic Impact of Occurrences on Railways

The issue of economic evaluation of investment projects is a field focusing on socio-economic impact assessment of projects implemented within the public sector. This paper is focused on socio-economic evaluation of public investment projects concerning railway infrastructure. It builds on previous research aimed at evaluating the impacts of measures implemented to increase safety and reliability of railway transport. The subject matter of the paper is the evaluation of socio-economic impacts of partial occurrences that arise in the field of railway infrastructure. From a methodological point of view, the evaluation is based on a detailed survey of occurrences incurring in the 2011–2018 period. Using the results of previous research, occurrences incurring on the railway infrastructure relevant to the evaluation were identified. Furthermore, unit impacts of occurrences in the form of health impacts, train delays and overall costs were identified. By combining the above-mentioned input information and outputs of a detailed analysis of the Occurrence Database, the average values of the socio-economic impacts of relevant occurrences were determined. The results of the research carried out shall be further used as an input for the evaluation of the benefits associated with increasing the safety and reliability of the railway infrastructure