SELECTION CRITERION FOR TRACK DESIGN OF HIGH SPEED RAILWAY

Objective function of economic justification of track design for high speed rail is the correlation of total expenditure intended for track construction and for maintenance. This target function is subject to minimization. In order to reduce costs to comparable form it is supposed to use a rate of transport cost per unit. The calculated period of summation of costs and charges is determined by duration of life cycle of the project. Total project efficiency as well as efficiency of participation in its implementation is evaluated by quantity and quality indicators. Taken together they are focused on revealing surplus of the results of project implementation over its costs during a certain period. To achieve study’s objective the authors use several methods which could de bene esse be included in two groups: of simple (static) methods and dynamic or discounting methods. The first group includes pауbаск period (РР) and return on investment (ROI) techniques. The second group includes net present value, profitability index, internal rate of return, discounted payback period.

The article notes that discounting technique reveals certain shortcoming, particularly it doesn’t provide for financial flow after the moment of full cost recovery till project life expiration. This factor explains the fact that under the long periods of cost recovery the reduced effects are larger than under short periods. The article also suggests some criteria of technical and economic assessment of current maintenance of HSR rail track, underlining that the traditional approaches aren’t effective. For instance, there is no much sense to assess losses caused by reduced train traffic speed, additional costs caused by train acceleration and deceleration.

The authors argue that any fail to respect the HSR schedule results in important financial losses for a rail company, particularly for JSC Russian Railways. That’s why current outlay costs of HSR operation should be assessed as an equivalent of financial losses of a participant of traffic process who is responsible for such costs.

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