Optimistic bias of Rail Baltica Member States vs reference cases of countries with HSR: outside view on social-economic indicators

Abstract

The Rail Baltica high-speed railway construction project is an integral part of the pan-European TEN-T project, and great hopes are pinned on the implementation of this project in the participating countries.

It should be noted that for decision makers, planning of such a complex and only joint project is a unique and unprecedented experience. Exactly in such cases, all the attention is focused on the project itself and its details, without any comparison being made to similar projects in other countries. The presence of imaginary forecast scenarios of the Rail Baltica project only distracts the attention of decision makers from the relevant statistics of already implemented HSR projects and misleads them, giving excessive optimism in the plans for the implementation of such a non-standard international project in the Baltic region. 

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the real capabilities of the Rail Baltica project based on an outside view(Kahnemann & Tversky, 1979). To achieve this goal, the author, through a comparative analysis of statistical data of a number of socio-economic indicators of countries that already operate HSR, and Rail Baltica Member States, identified the main factors and their parametric characteristics that affect the viability of HSR projects.

Based on the results of the study, potential problematic issues of the Rail Baltica project were identified and recommendations for adjusting the assessment of costs, benefits and project duration were given.