Financial and social profitability of HSR in Spain

Abstract

The total cost of the network already in operation is likely to exceed €50,000 million expressed in monetary units of 2015. This investment effort, mostly carried out in the last 15 years, has been undertaken in parallel with an ambitious airport capacity expansion and a large highway construction plan. Surprisingly, until 2015 no analysis commissioned by the Spanish government to measure the social returns of these new infrastructures, if such a one exists, has been made public.