THE FULL COST OF HIGH-SPEED RAIL - AN ENGINEERING APPROACH

This paper examines the full costs. defined as the sum of private and social costs, of a high-speed rail system proposed for a corridor conn ecting Los Angeles and San Francisco in California. The full costs inc lude infrastructure, fleet capital and operating expenses, the time us ers spend on the system, and the social costs of externalities, such a s noise, pollution, and accidents. Comparing these full costs to those of other competing modes contributes to the evaluation of the feasibi lity of high-speed rail in the corridor. The paper concludes that high -speed rail is significantly more costly than expanding existing air s ervice, and marginally more expensive than auto travel. This suggests that high-speed rail is better positioned to serve shorter distance ma rkets where it competes with auto travel than longer distance markets where it substitutes for air.