An ex-ante economic and environmental assessment of railway intervention: A case study in Regione Lombardia

Giovanni Garola, Guillaume Monchambert (), Giovanni Mancardi, Chiara Siragusa and Riccardo Mangiaracina
Additional contact information
Guillaume Monchambert: Université de Lyon, UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2, LAET - Laboratoire Aménagement Économie Transports - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - ENTPE - École Nationale des Travaux Publics de l'État - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: The present case study aims to enrich the discussion on Conventional Rail (CR) interventions, investigating two types of solutions, a frequency increase and a new station construction, in two different contexts, respectively, characterised by high and low demands. The area of investigation is Regione Lombardia (Italy). We combine a Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) and a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to estimate economic and environmental viability. We find different performances according to the scenarios. In the high-demand area, a Benefit Cost Ratio (BCR) larger than 1 is observed in both interventions, while in the low-demand area, the BCR is significantly lower than 1. For the emissions, the implementation of the interventions shows almost a net balance of zero between the emissions saved and the additional emissions produced. Sensitivity analyses varying the critical variables (i.e., demand diverted, investment costs, and emission factors) are performed. The diverted demand results in being critical to improve both performances, whereas a mutually beneficial approach that combines environmental and transport policies is essential to reduce transport emissions. The following study contributes to academia by comparing the expected effects of different railway interventions in a CR system, using a combined economic and environmental assessment for their evaluation.

Date: 2025-03
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Case Studies on Transport Policy, 2025, 19, pp.101367. ⟨10.1016/j.cstp.2025.101367⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05132862

DOI: 10.1016/j.cstp.2025.101367

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().