A Novel Approach to Economic Evaluation of Infrastructure? Examining the Benefit Analyses in the Swedish High-Speed Rail Project

The purpose of this paper is to describe a novel approach to economic evaluation of infrastructure, the benefit analyses in the Swedish high-speed rail project, and to analyse what role these can play in the decision-making process. The reports identify benefits from infrastructure investment at the local level and were intended to assist in making co-financing agreements and as a basis for decisions on route-planning and prioritisation of public transport investments. The study finds that the benefit analyses are insufficient as decision bases as they double-count benefits, disregard costs, are methodologically inconsistent and lack comparability. Rather, they seem to fulfil the role of negotiation bids in a process that focuses on measuring the level of commitment and the willingness to contribute financially to the project. It seems that the new method increases the space for political manoeuvring which together with the one-sided focus on benefits risks worsening the optimism bias observed in mega-project planning.