A Study On The Optimization Of Economic Evaluation Framework And Method Of China’s High-speed Rail

The operating mileage of China’s high-speed rail ranks first in the world,and the plan from “Four Verticals and Four Horizontals” to “Eight Verticals and Eight Horizontals”continues to meet the increasing demands of economic and social development and the need for high-quality transportation services.However,the large construction cost of HSR and the difficulty of reaching the financial break-even point of transportation have intensified the debt scale and financial unsustainable operating pressure of the National Railway Group and local governments.In order to ensure that the government obtains the economic benefits in the investment of HSR projects,and to ensure the comparability between different public projects,it is necessary to improve and optimize the economic evaluation system and methods of existing HSR projects to serve the scientific determination of effective investment projects.This paper reviews through the international experience of the economic evaluation methods and frameworks of HSR projects,and compares the evaluation methods and implementation cases of existing HSR projects in China.It is believed that the current evaluation system of HSR projects in China has the following problems: the parameters of economic benefits are no longer applicable for HSR Project;lack of quantitative methods for indirect benefits;omitted the network benefits.In response to the above shortcomings,this article incorporates the technical and economic characteristics of the HSR project in the framework of the general railway project economic evaluation,uses the willingness to pay method to optimize the core parameters,proposes a quantitative method for indirect benefits,and analyzes the HSR project operation and other transportation networks The impact of time supplements the network benefits brought by the high-speed rail project and optimizes the economic evaluation system of the high-speed rail project.This article takes the newly built XT and KC projects in Inner Mongolia as a case,and analyzes it from an empirical point of view with the author’s improved economic evaluation framework and quantitative methods of benefits.The research results show that although the financial performance of the two projects is not good,they have good economic benefits.The EIRR of the two projects has doubled under the same level of transportation volume,and the economic benefits have been significantly improved.This verifies the high-speed rail project constructed in this paper.The completeness of the economic evaluation optimization framework.Using the willingness to pay method to quantify the core parameters can accurately measure the economic efficiency of the project;The reduction of carbon emissions as an indicator can effectively quantify the environmental benefits,but the proportion of environmental benefits is relatively small,and it is difficult to influence project decision-making under the evaluation framework of the cost-benefit method;The network benefits of HSR projects and highways have been highlighted under the "Road to Railway" policy.Finally,based on the above research conclusions,authoritative methods and guidance manuals for economic evaluation of HSR projects should be issued,and policy recommendations for establishing a post-evaluation mechanism for high-speed rail projects.In addition,multi-criteria analysis need to be introduced in order to optimize the investment of highspeed rail projects.decision making.