Traditional economic evaluations ofmajor transport infrastructure investments focus on thedirect costs and benefits arising from travel, includinguser time savings, operator cost savings, and reductions inexternalities including air pollution, noise, and accidents.There is an emerging consensus that major transportinvestments may have significant impacts that are not wellcaptured by this type of conventional cost-benefit analysis.In China, the World Bank transport team has supported botheconometric studies and on-the-ground surveys that begin toidentify and quantify these impacts in the context ofChina's emerging High Speed Rail (HSR) program. Basedon this and other research, the Bank team has begun to pilota methodology to evaluate wider economic developmentbenefits for several HSR projects, and has found them to besignificant - of the same order as, but additional to thedirect transport benefits that are traditionally measured.Crucially, these benefits of larger and better connectedmarkets accrue to businesses and individuals even when theythemselves do not travel. This paper highlights thisresearch and methodology and the policy implications relatedto maximizing these benefits in practice.
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