Study On Economical Evaluation Method Of Railway Investment Projects

Railway investment project is one of large-scale public projects which need big investment funds, long construction and long payback period. It is the fist capital of China economic development. Just as other public welfare projects, the implementation of railway investment projects on the regional economy, society, environment has a profound effect. Therefore, we should study on the contribution of national economies of the railway investment projects based on the theory of the public welfare and the externality. Then we have to improve the economic evaluation methods of the existing railway investment projects, in order to reflect the project to regional economic, social and environmental benefits truly.This paper studies the main problems are the following:First, this paper has studied on the development of railway national economic evaluation methods between domestic and overseas, found problems of the current methods and proposed solutions and methods of these problems.Secondly, through used of the theory of public goods and externality, it analyses the railway characteristics of public welfare and externality. While we focus on defining the externality of railway investment projects, laying the theoretical foundation for the proposing national economic evaluation methods of railway investment projects based on the external theory.Thirdly, this theory has been applied to the national economic evaluation of railway investment projects. In this article, it has established a new cost-benefit analysis system. New approach, includes cost-benefit analysis of road network efficiency, demand-side benefits, social benefits, environmental benefits and supply-side benefits. According to the current practice, new method of cost-benefit analysis no longer adopts the traditional methods definition between direct benefits and indirect benefits, and it defines the project boundary between external benefits and internal benefits based on external theory. It no longer adopts the shadow price to correct the price distortion neither, and it enumerated a series of external benefits to correct the benefits distortion in theory.Finally, with an example of using the new approach on national economic evaluation of railway investment projects, compared with the current approach, the thesis concludes the feasibility of the new approach. It also provides new ideas about the further exploring the economic evaluation of railway investment projects.